HOLYOKE MACHINE COMPANY, 

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WEB SUPER-CALENDER, 



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The Paper World. 

A SPECIAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, DISCUSSION AND 
RECITAL AS TO PAPER. 



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A HISTORY OF PAPER. 



ITS GENESIS 



ITS REVELATIONS 



L^l 



Origin and Manufacture, Utility and Commercial Value of 

AN InDISI'ENSAHLE STAPLE OF THE COM- 
MERCIAL World. 



NOV 22 1882. 



>p/rwAaHiH«*l 



ot 



V. 



Holyoke, Mass., U. S. A.: 

CLARK W. BRYAN & COMPANY 

18S2. 



^ ^7J 



COPYRKUITED, iSSl. 



Paper World Press. 
1882. 



,>\ 



r 



Prepared by J. E. A. SMITH, 

And originally published in the pages of The Patkr World 




A Sixteenth Century Paper Mill. 



V. 



r 



IN THREE PARTS. 



PART I. Connection hetween the Invention of Printing and 
Pai'er — Reasons for the long delay of roth — Ar- 
ticles USED IN the place OF MODERN PaI'KR BEFORE 
ITS INVENTION. 

PART n. The Second Era of Paper-Making — IlANn-MADE Pa- 
per FROM Vegetable Pulp. 

PART III. The MANU^•ACTURE of Paper p.y Machinery —The 
Manufacture of Paper p.y Hand. 



V. 



r 




Vat Paper-Makini; in iS.Si, 



V 



r 



PART I. 

Connection behueen the Invention of Printing and 

Papei'' — Reason, for the long delay of both 

— Articles used m the place of Modern 

Paper before its Invention. 

A PHILOSOPHICAL historian maintains 
that the failure of the civilized and highly 
cultivated nations of antiquity to invent the art 
of Printing was due to the lack of a cheap, 
light and durable material to receive and preserve 
the impression of the types ; and, in support of 
his proposition, he reminds us of the near and 
suggestive approach to such a discovery which 
was constantly before the eyes of Egyptians, 
Greeks and Romans in the use of seals. Since 
this proposition was made, some thirty or forty 
years ago. Oriental investigation has found, an- 
tedating even Egyptian civilization, on the in- 
scribed bricks of Babylon and Nineveh, long 
histories actually printed, although the impression 
was embossed by moulds instead of being colored 
by ink. It was, nevertheless, just as much print- 
ing as the books which are now prepared for the 
use of the blind. In often-recurring phrases, 



r 



8 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



such as the styles of the kings, the inscriptions 
were doubtless made by stereotyped moulds, but 
the cuneiform printers upon bricks evidently had 
movable types, although there is no reason to be- 
lieve that they learned to compose them in 
" forms." Each separate character, except in the 
case before mentioned, was probably inscribed by 
a mould or type provided with a handle, by which 
it was deftly taken from a set, which ansv/ered the 
purpose of a modern printer's case, and, after 
using, as deftly replaced, requiring no further 
"distribution" before it was again called for. 
Artists in all such work acquire a dexterity which 
results in wonderful rapidity of execution, al- 
though, of course, immeasurably short of such 
marvels as are accomplished by our modern ma- 
chine printing. The motions of the printers or 
stampers who moulded the old inscribed bricks 
may be supposed to have been similar to those of 
the musical Swiss Bell Ringers of our time, 
although much more rapid, as no rhythmic move- 
ment was required. 

A still nearer approach to printing in the 
modern sense is found in the figures and hiero- 
glyphics inscribed, with heated metal brands, by 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



way of epitaph, upon bands of red leather bound 
around the foreheads of some of the Egyptian 
mummies. 

It maybe added to these suggestive approaches 
to the invention of printing, that the ancients 
had, besides the flowing ink used with a reed or 
quill pen, another which was applied with a stiff 
brush, and must have been a near approach to 
printing ink, even if it could not have been 
actually used as such. Pliny rudely describes it 
as made, in various ways, from soot, by mixing it 
with burnt pitch and resins; " for which purpose," 
he says, " furnaces have been built which do not 
permit the escape of the smoke. The best made 
in this way is from pine w^ood." Soot, obtained 
in this manner, and resinous oils, are certainly 
suggestive of lamp and ivory black, resin and 
vegetable oils ; the chief ingredients of modern 
printing ink. 

But, admitting this suggestive approach to the 
invention of printing — and, as we have shown it, 
in closer approximation than the author alluded 
to claims — and granting also that the existence 
of such a paper as we now possess would have 
hastened the advent of that art by centuries, still 



V 



r 



lO PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



K, 



it does not, of necessity, follow, that its non-exist- 
ence was the prime or chief cause which, for thou- 
sands of years, kept hidden from the world that 
which is not only " the art preservative of all arts," 
but the indispensable medium of that new life 
which, since its discovery, has everywhere been 
the inspirer of mechanical invention, not less 
than of other grand results of thought. 

We shall find presently that the prepared 
papyrus of the Egyptians was even more strictly 
a true paper than the moulded bricks of Babylon 
and Nineveh were true printing. The real reason 
why the world remained so many thousand years 
upon the very verge of two great discoveries with- 
out ever crossing it, was that absorption of the 
mental energy of the nations of antiquity in other 
directions, which left their inventive genius in a 
strangely dormant condition. Those nations had 
artists of wonderful genius and mechanics of ad- 
mirable skill; but, as compared with those of 
modern civilization, no great machinists. They 
were acquainted with the laws of mechanics, and, 
for some purpose — as in the raising of ponderous 
stones — employed them with stupendous effect. 
They had a marvelous dexterity in the use of 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. \ i 



artists' and artisans' tools ; but, if they ever com- 
bined that knowledge and that skill for such pur- 
poses as modern inventors and machinists combine 
them, it was with small result as compared with 
the simplest modern machinery. Having devised 
a moderately satisfactory machine — such, for in- 
stance, as the hand-loom of seventy-five years ago 
may represent — they were content therewith. 
After that, their highest ambition was to acquire 
a facile use of it, and, at the utmost, to get the 
best possible work out of it by manual dexterity, 
without any restless endeavor to improve the ma- 
chine itself. And this inactivity in mechanic in- 
vention — this primitive lethargy of inventive 
genius — was not confined to the nations of antiq- 
uity, but continued throughout the middle ages, 
and, to a certain degree, even long after the in- 
troduction of the paper manufacture and the in- 
vention of the printing press. From so protracted 
a slumber the awakening was naturally slow and 
gradual. The new philosophy which had birth in 
the sixteenth century hastened it. The seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed grand 
and fundamental discoveries and inventions. 
But the era in which we now live can hardly be 



r 



I 2 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



said to have commenced prior to the year iS8o. 
Grand as many inventions previous to that date 
were, they did not clearly even prophesy that 
almost bewildering multiplication of automatic 
machinery which genius has within the last eighty 
years endowed with a skill — or at least with a 
precision, delicacy, rapidity and certainty of exe- 
cution — never attained by intelligent agents. 
The powers of machinery, of which previous 
ages laid the sure foundation, have been carried 
by ours to an exquisite perfection of which they 
never dreamed; and that with a celerity of prog- 
ress compared with which all previous advance 
was but stagnation. 

It is in the light of the truths which we have 
thus briefly stated that we must read the history 
of the paper manufacture. And, in order fully to 
comprehend its worth to the world, we must also 
first consider the imperfection of the materials 
which, before its invention, filled its place, and 
the costly, wearisome and cumbrous processes of 
their manufacture. 

Probably the first purpose for which a substi- 
tute for paper was required was the transmission 
of simple messages ; and any tolerably smooth 



r 



"N 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



and light substance which came to hand was suf- 
ficient to receive the rude figures or hieroglyphics 
which told the story or helped the messenger to 
tell it. The smooth bark or the broad leaves of 
certain trees were generally most available. The 
white birch of the American forests would have 
been a favorite ; and it has often been used by 
both the early settlers and the aborigines as a 
substitute for paper in cases of necessity.* As 
the wants of civilization advanced, the different 
parts of the tree were employed for a time more 
generally than any other materials ; the leaves be- 
ing strung upon threads for preservation, the 
outer and inner bark made smooth and so pliant 
as to be rolled, and the wood cut into thin boards, 
and sometimes covered with a coating of wax. 
Thin sheets of metal or of ivory, leather, painted 
cloth, stones, brick, and every similar material 
known to that day were also used. 

Upon this continent the Aztecs, who attained 
to a system of hieroglyphical writing, although 
far inferior to that of the Egyptians, had for their 
manuscripts, according to Prescott, cotton cloth 
and skins nicely prepared, and also " a composi- 

*An ingenious publisher on the Wliite Mountains printed a newspaper upon bircli bark 
in the year iSSo. 



r 



14 PAPER: IPS GENESIS 



tion of silk and gum ; " sized silk, as we should 
say. But " for the most part they used a fine 
fabric from the leaves of the aloe, agave Ameri- 
cana, called by them magueys, which grows lux- 
uriantly over all the table-lands of Mexico." " A 
sort of paper," continues Mr. Prescott, "was made 
from it, resembling somewhat the Egyptian 
papyrus, which, when properly dressed and pol- 
ished, is said to have been more soft and beauti- 
ful than parchment. Some of the specimens 
exhibit their original freshness, and the paintings 
on them retain their brilliancy of colors. They 
were sometimes done up in rolls, but more fre- 
quently into volumes, of moderate size, in which 
the paper was shut up like a folding screen, with 
a tablet of wood at each extremity, that gave the 
whole, when closed, the appearance of a book. 
The length of the strips was determined only by 
convenience. As the pages might be read and 
referred to separately, this form had obvious ad- 
vantages over the rolls of the ancients." We 
have seen Oriental manuscripts of a quite recent 
date folded in the method thus described. 

The ancient Peruvians, who thought the annals 
of their empire of sufficient importance to require 



/ ^ 

AND I TS RE VELA TIONS. I 5 



a corps of keepers, had no better aid to show in 
the place of paper than the quiptt — a cord about 
two feet long composed of different colored threads 
tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of 
smaller threads w^ere suspended in the manner of 
fringe. The threads were tied in knots, and, by 
their arrangement, indicated not only sensible ob- 
jects, but abstract ideas. But the quipus were 
chiefly used for arithmetical purposes, which 
they seem to have answered very well. 

Still papyrus and parchment were the two ma- 
terials which chiefly supplied the place of paper 
in the civilized nations of antiquity when they 
came to have an extended literature and large 
public and private libraries, as well as to require, 
as we now do, immense quantities for the ordi- 
nary transactions of social, official and business 
life. And these two articles came to be great 

o 

staples in the commerce of the world ; Egypt 
holding a close monopoly both in the manufact- 
ure of the papyrus and in the production of the 
raw material, which must have been very lucra- 
tive indeed. 

Papyrus is the Latinized Greek name of a 
plant called by the Egyptians Bublos, whence 



v 



r 



I 6 PAPER: ITS G EXE SIS 



came the Greek Biblion, paper, and, in a final 
sense, a book, and thence our name for the Holy 
Scriptures as the Book of books. It grows in 
swamps, to the height of ten feet. It was found 
chiefly in the overflowed lands of the river Nile 
and the neighboring marshes ; but there, in the 
days of Egypt's prosperity, it grew in immense 
abundance, being doubtless carefully cultivated 
and protected. It has now become rare, fulfilling 
the prophecy of Isaiah: "The paper reeds by the 
brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall 
wither, be dnven away, and be no more." The 
stalk of this plant, which is properly styled " a 
reed," is triangular and bare, except near the root, 
where there are some small leaves. The top is 
surmounted by a bushy head of long, fibrous foli- 
age, spreading from the stalk very much in the 
shape of our common feather dust-brusli. It was 
cut annually, about eighteen inches of the lower 
part of the stalk being sold for edible purposes, 
and the remainder devoted to the paper manufact- 
ure. This stalk consists of twenty pellicles, or 
thin folds, varying in fineness of texture from the 
coarse exterior bark, which was only used for 
cordage and other purposes, for which hemp and 



V. 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. \ 7 



similar materials are now employed, to the coat- 
ing nearest the pith where the most delicate fiber 
was found. 

The manufactured papyrus was of nine distinct 
qualities, governed chiefly by the selection of raw 
material ; and it is quite in accordance with 
modern custom that each was designated by its 
own peculiar name, as " Augusta," " Liviana," 
" Hieretica," etc. The last named, originally the 
best, was reserved for religious books and uses, 
but, afterwards, under the influence of Roman 
culture, the others were made to supply its lux- 
urious tastes. The coarsest grades, known as 
the " Tamoretic " and " Emporetica," were sold 
by weight, and used only for wrapping paper. 
The process of manufacture was not complicated 
as compared either with its results or with the 
making of modern paper. Neither machinery or 
any intelligent application of chemical science 
had any part in it. It was purely a mechanical 
preparation of a substance wonderfully adapted 
by nature to the purposes for which it was needed. 

The folds in the tissue of the stalk were first 
separated by an instrument, sometimes called "a 
needle," and sometimes " a sharp stone." The 



r 



"^ 



I 8 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



latter was probably used at an early period, al- 
though we find the same term applied, as late as 
the middle of the fifth century before our era, to 
the knife employed in the preparation of bodies 
for burial. 

A layer of one class of these folds was then 
placed upon an inclined table of wood, wet with 
the water of the Nile, and the rough ends cut 
straight. Across this a second layer was laid at 
right angles, and sometimes a third at right angles 
with the second. During the reign of the first 
Claudius over the Roman empire — A. D. 41-54 
— a great improvement in the fineness, strength 
and color of some varieties of papyrus paper was 
made by putting a layer of the most delicate folds 
over the coarser but stronger. Where the folds 
were imperfect they were patched, the adhesive 
power being supplied by a glutinous substance 
which the Egyptians believed to belong to the 
Nile water, but which actually resided in the 
papyrus leaf. Hie same glutinous quality caused 
the layers to adhere when they were subjected to 
the pressure which was the next step in the man- 
ufacture. After which they were dried in the 
sun. A firm, hard sheet having thus been ob- 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIOXS. 



19 



I 



tained, any roughness in it was beaten smooth 
with mallets, and the surface polished by hand 
with a semi-cylinder of stone, glass, shell or ivory. 

The width of the papyrus sheet was determined 
partly by convenience and partly by the length 
of the papyrus leaf used ; specimens are found 
varying from five to eighteen inches in breadth. 
The length might be indefinitely prolonged, sheet 
being added to sheet by the aid of their inherent 
glutinous property, often aided by paste or some 
species of glue. There seems to be no good 
reason why the width might not have been in- 
creased in the same way, had it been desirable. 
When finished, the papyrus paper was rolled 
upon a wooden cylinder, the ends of which pro- 
jected, and were often ornamentally finished. 
The longest roll yet found is thirty feet long and 
eleven inches wide. 

There are many fabulous accounts of the first 
use of the papyrus as a writing material, as we 
have described it ; but the true date is lost in the 
mists of the earliest antiquity. In some form it 
was certainly thus used as early as 2400 B.C. 
Specimens are still preserved fully three thousand 
years old. The official papers of those extremely 



20 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



conservative rulers, the Popes, were written upon 
it as late as the twelfth century. In this long in- 
terval — 3500 years — between 2400 B. C. and 
1 100 A, D., great changes took place in the mode 
of manufacture — and yet by no means so great in 
that vast period as the paper manufacture has 
undergone during the last hundred years. In 
that fact we have a measure of the comparative 
rate of progress in mechanical invention in 
ancient and modern times. 

An interesting point in the history of papyrus 
paper is the part it played in the commerce of the 
world, which shows both the large quantities man- 
ufactured and the culture of the civilization which 
demanded it. In this connection it is a sufjo-es- 
tive fact that the use of papyrus increased when 
the Greeks obtained possession of Egypt, and 
both the use increased and the quality improved 
when Roman domination succeeded to Greek, 
Its palmiest period was after the Christian era, 
although for centuries, as well before as after the 
birth of Christ, it was a most important branch of 
both manufacture and commerce, the supply be- 
ing always less than the demand. In the year 15 
A. D., a popular commotion arose in Rome on 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



21 



account of the scarcity of papyrus. In 290 A. 
D., Firmus, a rich merchant, who in an attempt 
to reach tlie throne of the Roman empire captured 
the city of Alexandria, boasted that among its 
spoils were so much paj^er and size that its value 
would support his army. Early in the sixth cen- 
tury A. D., Theodoric the Great abolished the high 
tariff upon imported papyrus, and Cassiodorus, 
a man of letters as well as a Roman senator, 
wrote a letter congratulating the world on the 
removal of a tax so injurious to commerce and so 
unfavorable to the progress of knowledge — a tax 
upon "an article essentially necessary to the 
human race" and the general use of which "pol- 
ishes and immortalizes man." 

Memphis seems to have been then, and long pre- 
vious, the chief seat of the manufacture, for the 
learned senator speaks of it as " a noble invention 
of ingenious Memphis — that the beautiful texture 
made in a single spot should cover all the writing 
desks of the w^orld." In parts of his letter, which 
we have not quoted, the style of Senator Cassi- 
odorus displays the flowery bad taste of its day, 
but the quoted passages sound very much like 
what a visiting statesman of literary proclivities 



r A 



2 2 PAPER : ITS GENESIS 



might write in our time, referring to the paper 
manufactures of Lee, Dalton or Holyoke. We 
might quote further facts showing the great value 
of papyrus paper in the commerce of the Egyp- 
tian, Greek and Roman workl, but it is unneces- 
sary. It will not be denied that it held a place, 
compared with other products, quite as important 
as paper now does. But, although the chief 
source of the papyrus plant was in Egypt, it was 
found elsewhere, in less abundance and in less 
careful protection ; the Egyptian preponderance 
being similar to that of the southern states of the 
American Union in the production of cotton. 

The papyrus, as a writing material, is naturally 
about equally durable with modern paper; but 
two extraneous circumstances have conduced to 
the preservation of a large number of ancient 
specimens. Over 2.000 rolls have been found in 
the excavation of the cities of Herculaneum and 
Pompeii which were buried in the famous erup- 
tion of Mount Vesuvius, A. D., 471 ; but the 
greater number have been found enwrapped with 
mummies in the catacombs of Egypt, and pre- 
served by the exclusion of the air and the anti- 
septic powers of the substances used in embalm- 



/ \ 



AA'D ITS REVELATIONS. 



~0 



ing the dead. The inscriptions upon these rolls 
are generally in the Egyptian characters, but fre- 
quently also in the Greek. They have for the 
most part the brown color into which ink in 
which soot is a laro-e ino-redient fades, but often 
the black is as brilliant as though written yes- 
terday. 

It is not within our province to discuss the 
historic or literary value of the writings upon the 
rolls of papyri which have come down to us, but 
there is one curious fact that comes within our 
practical scope. It would have been a bold 
prophet who dared to tell one of the Pharaohs 
upon his throne that, in the lapse of ages, and be- 
fore they had returned to dust, their tombs would 
be ravaged by their semi-barbarous successors in 
the land, not only that they might sell to inquisi- 
tive students from distant lands, the papyri in- 
scribed with the record of their glories — there 
might have been some consolation in ihal — but 
in order to export to regions of which they never 
dreamed, the linen w^rappings in which their em- 
balmed bodies, and those of their people, were so 
carefully enveloped, there to be used as a ma- 
terial in the manufacture of a better paper than 



V. 



r 



24 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



the Memphis paper-makers ever sent to Rome or 
Alexandria. And yet it is a fact that the Arabs 
have phmdered the catacoml^s, disrobed the mum- 
mies, and sold their wrappings to be sent to Eng- 
land and America as paper rags. The Egyptian 
embalmers showed their thrifty habits by using 
for the inner wrappings second-hand linen, whose 
darning proves that the housewives of Pharaoh's 
time were as economical and industrious as ours ; 
but, for all that, the catacombs are a precious 
linen mine to the Arab and Bedouin rag-gather- 
ers, who even save the more perfectly preserved 
cloth for their own garments, ghastly as we 
might suppose the robes to be which, for thou- 
sands of years, have shrouded a corpse. These 
same thrifty modern Egyptians find also, in the 
catacombs of their predecessors, a rich coal mine, 
usinor the wooden mummv cases, and often the 
mummies themselves, as fuel. Impregnated with 
the bituminous and other inflammable substances • 
used in embalming, the wood burns like pitch 
pine and the bodies "like cannel coal. A Euro- 
pean explorer, not long ago, bought three asses' 
loads of mummy cases as the only fuel he could 
procure to cook his food. How prodigious the 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



25 



number of bodies buried in these caverns must 
have been may be estimated by the fact, that, 
after thus being drawn upon for centuries, they 
still supply the Arabs with articles of sale eagerly 
bought by Europeans, and also fuel, and some- 
times clothing, for themselves. 

Is the papyrus — the final product, and not the 
plant — a true paper ? Some good recent writers 
use expressions from which we can only infer that 
they so consider it, and yet they often compare it 
with paper as now made in terms which leave a 
wide distinction between the two, distinoruishinor 
the former as a natural and the latter as a manu- 
factured paper. The writer upon this subject in 
Knight's Mechanical Dictionary defines paper as 
" a material made in thin sheets from a pulp of 
ground rags or other fiber, and used for writing 
or printing upon or for wrapping.' Further on, he 
gives a fuller definition of " true paper " as " made 
of rags or other vegetable fiber, reduced to a 
pulp, gathered into a sheet, felted in setting, and 
dried." Worcester and Webster, anions: the uses 
to which paper may be applied, add to "writing, 
printing or wrapping," " various other purposes." 
Webster, correctly as it seems to us, omits the 



26 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



condition that the pulp must be obtained by 
grinding rags or other fiber. And although, as 
we well know, paper, either in its completed state, 
or in the various stages preceding that, may be, 
and constantly is, employed for other important 
purposes than that of a writing or printing ma- 
terial, do we not daily see true paper that can be 
used for no other purpose than a writing mate- 
rial without a total change in its character ? 
The definition of a thing is strictly the descrip- 
tion of that thing as it is, without reference to 
the process by which it may become so, or any 
other by which it may be transformed to some- 
thing else. When we go beyond that we trench 
upon the province of the encyclopaedist, or the 
essayist. Paper would be paper if we found it 
growing in leaves upon the trees, as it would be 
paper still although it could not be, by any pres- 
sure, changed into papier mache. We do not 
mean to say that it is not a uniform and valuable 
quality of paper as we have it, that it can be so 
transformed and also used for many purposes 
aside from its original one, but only that this is 
not an essential property in its character, not a 
necessary element in the definition of the word. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 27 



We ma}^ therefore safely follow Webster in 
eliminating from the definition of a true paper, 
the requirement that the pulp from which it is 
made shall be artificially prepared by grinding, or 
otherwise. With this variation from the old 
authorities, the writing material which the old 
world obtained from the papyrus plant must be 
recognized as a genuine paper. In the folds of 
that wonderful reed the old Egyptian paper man- 
ufacturers found a pulp sufificient for their pur- 
pose and abundantly supplied with a natural size. 
Beyond that their processes were coincident with 
our own, however much they differed in the de- 
tails of their application. To be sure, with all 
the beating and pressure it received, the original 
form of the plant's fiber was not destroyed, but, 
after thousands of years, may be now plainly seen 
in the earliest specimens of papyri roll extant. 
But we do not now destroy the fiber of the sub- 
stance from which we make paper for the sake of 
destroying it, but because it is necessary in order 
that it may become a pulp at all, and thus be 
ready for a new arrangement of its particles. 

Paper must be in " thin " sheets. This is a 
somewhat indefinite requirement. The papyri 



V. 



r 



28 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



were so bulky that a copy of Ovid's Metamor- 
phoses, which in modern print and paper fills 
only a very small duodecimo volume, covered 
eighteen papyri rolls, occupying the space upon 
a library shelf of as many octavo volumes. A 
copy of the works of Homer, Virgil, Livy, Sallust, 
or similar authors, would have filled more than 
ten times as many rolls. And this fact we must 
take into consideration when we read of the large 
number of volumes in the Alexandrian and other 
ancient libraries ; for a volume meant simply a 
roll. And yet the papyri rolls were so flexible 
that, with some little re-moistening, they may, 
after their immensely prolonged drying, to-day be 
rolled and unrolled. They had no such thickness 
as would exclude them from the list of true 
papers. 

The papyrus was, then, in our estimation, a 
true paper; while it still, as we shall presently 
show, differed widely in some respects from the 
true paper of to-day. 

We speak familiarly of paper as being used for 
various purposes which do not come within the 
definition we have given ; meaning, not that 
finished paper is so used, but that its fiber in dif- 



V. 



r 



A ND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 2 9 



V. 



ferent stages of preparation may be turned to 
those purposes, as the manufacture of papier 
mache and other articles which are certainly not 
" thin," and in this respect the papyrus is its equal, 
for Herodotus tells us that " the priests wear 
shoes made of the byblos, the sails of the Egyp- 
tian boats are made of the byblos, the priests read 
to me out of a byblos roll the names of three hun- 
dred and thirty kings." 

The close af^liation between paper, as we now 
have it, and the vegetable substances which, with 
more or less preparation, were, in the early ages, 
used in its place, is indicated by the modern no- 
menclature of the paper world. Thus we have 
paper from papyrus, and Bible froni the Egyptian 
name of the same plant. Folio is from the Latin 
folium, a leaf, and we still use it, in its translated 
form, both for the foliage of a tree and the thin 
sheets of a book. Page is the Latin pagina, a 
written leaf. Tablets from tabula, a board ; the 
the board smeared with wax used by the Greeks 
and Romans to write upon. Library is from the 
Latin, liber, a book, but previously the inner bark 
of a tree, from which the material for books was 
made. It is a happy, but doubtless accidental, 



r 



30 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



coincidence, that the same word means free, un- 
shackled, independent, open and fresh. Schedule 
is from scheda, the Latin for a strip of papyrus, 
and afterwards for a sheet of paper. Code and 
codicil are from codex, the trunk or stem of a 
tree. Volume is from volunieii, any thing that is 
rolled or wound up, as sheets of papyrus, and 
afterwards of parchment, were wound up. In a 
more liberal sense it was applied to the water 
which rolls over a fall, and to other rolling and 
pouring masses. But the first volumes were of 
papyrus; and each separate roll, as now each 
bound collection of written or printed leaves, was 
counted a volume ; a fact which one must always 
bear in mind when he reads of the immense num- 
ber of volumes in some ancient libraries. It will 
moderate his wonder why so few names of the 
books which composed them have come down 
to us. 

We may perhaps as well speak here as else- 
where of the effect which the cheapness and 
abundance of printed books has had in reducing 
the use of sculpture upon stone or other endur- 
ing material for the preservation of national 
records. For this, we now trust to the immense 



V 



r 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 3 1 



numbers and constant reproduction of printed 
histories. With this aid, the plain, unsculptured 
shaft on Bunker Hill tells its story as satisfactor- 
ily, and more eloquently, than Cleopatra's needles, 
with all their wealth of tediously inscribed hiero- 
glyphics, tell the history which they were de- 
signed to commemorate. 

Parchment, the material most used by the an- 
cients in the place of paper, next to the prepared 
papyrus, is the general name for the skins of cer- 
tain animals, when prepared to write upon, and 
" for other purposes," It is told in the old books 
that when Eumenes, king of Pergamos, some 200 
years B. C, was ambitious to build up a large 
library, the Ptolemy then ruling in Egypt, jealous 
of rivalry in that respect, prohibited the export of 
papyrus, and that Eumenes finally circumvented 
him and accomplished his purpose by the inven- 
tion of parchment, which received its Latin name, 
pergamena, from that of his kingdom. If the 
story is true, the zeal and ingenuity of Eumenes 
availed him little, for, when Marc Antony was 
one of the masters of the world, he seized the 
library of Pergamos and presented it to his bril- 
liant and beautiful but profligate mistress, Cleo- 



V 



r 



32 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



patra, the Egyptian queen, who added it to that, 
already famous, at Alexandria, whose fate it 
eventually shared. 

It is, however, quite certain that the skins of 
animals were among the earliest materials used in 
the place afterwards filled by paper. Herodotus 
tells us that the skins of sheep and goats were in 
common use as a writing material more than two 
centuries at least before the time of Eumenes, 
and other writers more obscurely refer to it as in 
use long before that time. Rev. Dr. Humphrey 
Prideaux, an eminent philosophical writer in the 
early part of the seventeenth century, claimed 
that the authentic copy of "The Law" which 
Hilkiah found in the Temple and sent to King 
Josiah, must have been on parchment, as no other 
writing material could have lasted for the period 
of 830 years which lay between the writing of 
that copy of the Law and the reign of Josiah. 
The intimate relations between the Jews and the 
Egyptians, and modern discoveries as to the dur- 
ability of papyrus paper, somewhat impair the 
force of Dr. Prideaux's reasoning. But we still 
have no instance of papyrus paper preserved for 
so long periods, except when buried with cities 



r 



A ND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 3 3 



or with men, it has been exckided from the air 
and other destructive agents. And, setting aside 
all Hebraic story, we still have the authority of 
Diodorus and Herodotus to the use, long before 
the time of Eumenes, by Greeks, Romans and 
Persians, of skins dressed substantially as parch- 
ment now is. What may rightly be claimed for 
Eumenes and those associated with him is, that 
they made improvements in the manufacture of 
parchment which better fitted it for use in book- 
making. 

If parchment had a later invention than papyrus 
paper, it has also had a longer continuance. Fine 
parchment is now made from the skins of sheep 
and she-goats, but a better article from those of 
kids, lambs and young calves ; the finest vellum 
from the skins of still-born calves, kids and lambs. 
Of the coarser parchments, Knight's Mechanical 
Dictionary says, with as much truth, and with 
more wit than is commonly found in encyclo- 
pccdias — this dictionary being an encyclopaedia: 

" Coarse parchment for drum heads, etc., is 
made from calves', wolves', asses' and he-goats' 
skins. The asses' skin is said to be remarkably 
sonorous, and it is no wonder, seeing the amount 



V. 



r 



34 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



of noise it has contained at various times. The 
Greeks found the bones of the ass a superior 
article for making flutes. The flute and the 
drum, a rich asinine combination, which probably 
suggested the Scotch bag-pipe whose drone is 
nearest to the paternal bray of anything artificial." 

In the manufacture of parchment to be written 
upon, the object was to render the skins thin, 
pliant, and of a uniform surface, free from fatty 
matter and other obstacles to its receiving the 
fluid ink properly. The other qualities having 
already been in a good measure attained, it was 
probably the aim and success of Eumenes and 
his associates to prepare the surface of the parch- 
ment to properly " take " the fluid ink and pre- 
vent the necessity of recourse to the old paint-like 
article used with a brush — a much slower and 
more costly method of writing or copying. 

Knight thus describes the modern manufacture 
of parchment: "After removing the wool, the 
skin is steeped in lime and then stretched on a 
wooden frame : its face is then scraped with a 
half round knife. The next process consists in 
rubbing the skin, previously sprinkled with pow- 
dered chalk or slacked lime, and scraping it with 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 35 



a knife. It is then rubbed with a lamb skin hav- 
ing the wool on, so as to smooth the surface and 
raise a very fine nap; after which, if any greasy 
matter remains, it is again steeped in the lime pit 
for a few days. The grain surface is then re- 
moved with a knife and the skin pumiced, if 
necessary, to give it an equal thickness." 

A peculiarity of the manufacture, not men- 
tioned by Knight, is that the frame, technically 
" the herse," upon which the skins are stretched, 
by the best makers, is surrounded by screws, 
much like the pegs by which the violin is tuned. 
This is probably a modern invention, the an- 
cients having used a hoop, as the smaller manu- 
facturers now do. But, even with the herse, there 
is no automatic power, but merely a use of natural 
mechanical forces applied by hand. 

A fine proof of the value of parchment is found 
in the fact that, during the dark ages, the monks 
used the rolls containing the great works of an- 
tiquity — and which their more enlightened prede- 
cessors had treasured up in the monastic libraries 
— as a material on which to indite their supersti- 
tious legends and scholastic controversial essays. 
Upon the revival of learning, chemical science 



36 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



found the means to remove the inferior ink of 
the convents and revive the better, which had 
been erased. In those curiously restored manu- 
scripts — known as palimpsests — some of the 
choicest classics have been preserved as perfectly 
as though they had been hidden in the ashes of 
Herculaneum or the catacombs of the Ptolemies. 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 2>1 



PART 11. 

The Second Era of Paper Making — Hand-Made 
Paper from Vegetable Pulp. 

It being admitted that the papyri rolls were 
essentially a true paper, and that parchment is 
well adapted to some of the purposes for which 
paper is used, and in some degree to others, it is 
nevertheless true that the great revolution in the 
fundamental principles of the manufacture took 
place when paper was first made of rags, or other 
vegetable fiber, reduced to a pulp, gathered into 
a sheet, felted in setting, and dried. 

"Human invention," it is said, "had in this 
case been anticipated by the wasp, which may be 
considered as a professional paper-maker, devot- 
ing a large portion of her time and energies to 
the production of this fabric, of which she builds 
her nest. For this purpose she seeks dry wood 



'\ 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



— fence rails and weather-beaten boards beino- a 
favorite source of supply — which she saws, or 
rasps, by mastication, into a paste, which, mixed 
with a natural size exuded for the purpose, she 
spreads into a sheet in a manner truly marvelous." 

As neither the wasp, hornet, or any other in- 
sect which operates in a similar manner, ever 
used its product as a writing material — perhaps 
from ignorance of the bleaching and polishing 
processes — we have no means of determining the 
date when the insect manufacturer began : author- 
ities differ as to the probabilities — all the way 
from six thousand to six million, or more, years. 
The date of the invention by man of the art of 
paper-making from a vegetable pulp, prepared 
artifically from some vegetable fiber, is somev/hat 
less uncertain, but it varies still over three hun- 
dred years in the estimate of different historians. 
The earliest estimates place it in the reign of 
Wan-te of the Chinese imperial dynasty, which 
lasted from the years 179 to 156 before Christ; 
the latest at about 200 A. D. 

So far as we have any information, the Chinese 
have an undoubted title to the honor of the in- 
vention. Four kinds of paper have been made 



\ 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 39 



in China at least ever since the latest of these 
dates, and it may be that their invention or im- 
provement from time to time caused the diversity 
of opinions we have mentioned. All these kinds 
appear to have been known as early as A. D. 
250, and to have experienced very little change 
from that time until the Celestial Empire was 
recently opened to the influences of our terrestrial 
civilization. These papers are known as Rice, 
Silk, Bamboo and Bark, 

Rice paper is a material so delicate and filmy 
that at the first glance one would think it illy 
adapted to receive writing or printing ; but it is 
much used for those purposes, and we have seen 
a beautiful little volume composed of it and filled 
with exquisite paintings of flowers. It is made 
from the pith of a leguminous plant, which the 
Chinese import from India and the island of 
Formosa, where it grows in abundance. The 
pith, having been prepared of the desired length 
for the sheet, is cut spirally into a thin slice, which 
is then flattened, pressed and dried. It obtains 
its name by receiving a sizing wholly or prin- 
cipally of rice water. The similarity of this proc- 
ess to the preparation of papyrus is so striking 



40 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



as to render it probable that it was suggested 
by it. 

Bark paper is made from the smaller branches 
of a variety of the mulberry tree. The bark, after 
being separated from the stem by boiling in lye, 
is macerated in water for several days ; the outer 
part scraped off, and the inner boiled and stirred 
in lye until it separates. It is then washed in a 
pan or sieve, and worked by the hands into a 
pulp, which is afterwards spread on a table and 
beaten fine with a mallet. It is next placed in a 
tub with an infusion of rice and a root called 
oreni, and all thoroughly mixed. The sheets are 
formed by dipping a mould made of strips of bul- 
rushes, confined in a frame into the vat. After 
moulding, the sheets are laid one upon another 
with strips of reed between. A board loaded 
with weights is then laid upon the pile to express 
the water, and, when that is accomplished, they 
are separated and dried in the sun. This paper 
is even more delicate than the rice; so much so 
that when it is necessary to write on both sides 
of a page two must be glued together. Suppos- 
ing, as the natural order seems to suggest, that 
the rice paper was the first and the bark the 



r 



"\ 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



41 



second made by the Chinese, we have here the 
first appearance of the pulping process in the 
manufacture. The bamboo paper, made from the 
fibre of that plant, reduced to a pulp and gathered 
in films, is, however, very ancient, and possibly 
older than the bark. 

The silk paper is the victim of a misnomer, 
arising from the misinformation of early travelers, 
which it has been found almost impossible to 
correct, for it is commonly believed to be made 
of silk. Silk is an animal, not a vegetable, sub- 
stance, and, although a few silken rags or a little 
refuse silk may occasionally be mixed with other 
material, they cannot by themselves be reduced 
to a pulp suitable for making paper. The silk 
paper of China is made, like our own, from cotton 
and linen rags, hemp, unmanufactured cotton and 
the like, sometimes mingled with wood and bam- 
boo pulp and possibly with a little silk. The 
rags, cotton and hemp, are prepared by being cut 
and well washed. They are then bleached, and 
by natural maceration of twelve days' duration 
converted into a pulp. This is made into balls 
weighii^g about four pounds, which, having been 
saturated with water, are spread upon a frame of 



r 



42 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



fine reeds and pressed under heavy weights. The 
drying is completed by suspension of the sheets 
upon the wall of a proper room ; and they are 
finished by being coated with a gum size, and 
polished with some smooth, hard substance. The 
sheets are sometimes of very large dimensions — 
reaching twelve feet in length with a correspond- 
ing breadth, the moulds being managed by the 
aid of pulleys. 

The art of paper-making spread from China 
throughout Central Asia, and there the Saracens 
found it during their conquests in Bukhara, about 
A. D. 704. It is curious, in this connection, to 
note the method of the paper manufacture as it 
was found by Moncroft in his travels a little 
before 18 18, in the neighboring region of Thibet: 

At a little distance from us, and close to the river, two people 
are engaged in preparations for making paper. They have two 
large bags of old paper that has been written upon, manufactured 
from the bark of the Latbarua. A few large flat stones are placed 
near the edge of the river where a stream has been divided from 
the main current by a low bank of sods. On the grass are two 
frames of wood, covered on one side with fine cloth, the other 
being open, thus forming a shallow tray. The workmen begin by 
dipping some of the old paper in the water, and then beat it upon 
a flat stone with a small round one until it is reduced to a pulp. 
One of the trays is then placed in the broad part of the canal, 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



43 



leaving a space for the water to run under it. The pulp is then 
put into a gear pump with water and worked into a fine paste. It 
is then poured upon the cloth and thus sunk two or three inches 
in the stream, so that the water rises through the cloth into the 
tray and still further dilutes the pulp. The floating impurities are 
picked, and the pulp agitated by hand until it is supposed to be 
sufficiently clear, when the current of water is lessened. The 
workman sees if the cloth be equally covered with pulp, and if 
any spots look thin, he stirs with his finger some other that 
appears too thickly covered, and raises a cloud of paste which he 
leads to the thin place, and by making a little eddy with a gradually 
decreasing motion deposits it there. When the sheet is, by this 
simple process rendered even, it is raised out of the water and 
laid upon the ground to dry. After the greater portion of the 
moisture is extracted it is gradually inclined from its horizontal 
position, until when nearly dry it becomes upright. When per- 
fectly hard, one corner of the large sheet is lifted from the cloth 
and then the whole detached by hand. 

It is a long way from this primitive process 
and these rude appHances to the costly modern 
paper mill filled with complicated machinery and 
skilled manufacturers. But it is the first step 
which is half the journey, and the proverbial 
persistence of the orientals in adhering to old 
methods renders it probable that the paper- 
making which, in 1817, Mr. Moncroft found in 
Thibet was very like that found A. D. 704 by 
the Arabian conqueror in Bukhara: somewhat 



r 



44 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



more rude, perhaps, in its appliances, but essen- 
tially the same in its operations. 

The material for the Bukhara paper is, how- 
ever, said to have been cotton. At least that 
was the material used by the Arabians when that 
enterprising and cultivated people carried the 
manufacture home. In the eighth century the 
Saracens made large conquests in Spain, where 
they established the flourishing Kingdom of 
Grenada, rich in many arts, among which was 
that of paper-making for which they at first, 
probably of necessity, used flax, although in 
their old Arabian home cotton had been the chief 
material. Cotton, however, soon resumed its 
reign. The raw cotton being used, the product 
was yellow and brittle and the Saracens made 
little improvement in it. Christian Spaniards, 
who had learned the art, remedied the difficulty 
in 1085 A. D., by substituting rags, and the same 
class, in Xatina, an ancient city of Valencia, in 
1 151, made the further improvement of stamping 
the rags, cotton, etc., into pulp, by water power. 
The paper of this city became famous, and was 
exported both to the East and the West. 

Cotton paper became general about the close 



V. 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



45 



of the twelfth century, but in the fourteenth, 
havins: been found as it was then made, not to 
possess sufficient strength or solidity for many 
purposes, it was almost entirely superseded by 
that made of hemp and linen rags; not weakened 
in their fibre in bleaching as they are in the 
present mode, which destroys the natural gum. 
These old linen papers, well sized with gelatine, 
retain their original qualities in many specimens 
even to the present day. The manufacture of 
this class of paper became common in France, 
Spain and Italy in the fourteenth century. The 
first German mill was built at Nuremberg, in 
1390. There are claims of the existence of a 
document written upon English linen paper 
bearing the date of 1320; but the best English 
authority which we are able to consult believes 
that the manufacture did not exist there until 
near the end of the fifteenth century, when the 
" Bartolomceiis " of Wynkin de Worde, the father 
of English typography, (published in 1496) speaks 
of a superior kind of paper made for that work 
by Thomas Tate at his mills in Stevenhenge, 
Hertfordshire. In 1498, Henry VII. gave this 
mill the munificent subsidy of sixteen shillings 



46 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



and eight pence, which it does not seem to have 
survived, for we hear no more of it, although 
Tate Hved until 15 14. In 1588, one Spielman, a 
German, and jeweler to her majesty. Queen 
Elizabeth, established a mill at Dartford, and got 
knighted for his enterprise. But, probably owing 
to the civil wars and the political disturbances 
connected with them, it was long before the paper 
manufacture flourished in .Great Britain. While 
France, by the superior quality of her product, 
was enabled to export it in immense quantities 
to all the countries of Europe — 2,000,000 livres 
in value in the year 1658 to Holland alone — 
England was importing almost her entire con- 
sumption. In 1663, says one authority, she 
received paper to the value of ^100,000 from 
Holland alone ; evidently, however, the product 
of France, as according to the same authority 
the first paper mill in Holland was not built 
until 1685. So slow was the progress of the 
manufacture in England that in Anderson's 
Commercial Dictionary, printed at London in 
1826, it is stated that paper was first manufact- 
ured in the Kingdom in 1690, and that up to 
that time she paid ^100,000 annually for that 



r 



V. 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 47 



imported from France. In 1690 the war with 
that country at once cut off this supply and 
called for high duties upon that received from 
other sources. Even the prospect of this state 
of affairs had in the year before rendered paper 
so dear that printing almost entirely ceased, 
except for absolutely necessary purposes ; and 
now, in 1690, some French Protestant refugees, 
who had settled in England began the manufact- 
ure of white writing paper — that, then recently, 
made there being brown. The business did not, 
however, become general. In 1696 a bill was 
brought into Parliament to lay a tax of 35 per 
cent, ad valorem upon all imported paper, parch- 
ment and vellum, 20 per cent, upon that made in 
England, and 17 upon that in the hands of 
dealers for sale. While this bill was pending, 
one company published a protest in which they 
stated that there were not above one hundred 
paper mills in all England, of which none, except 
their own, made anything except brown, and the 
coarsest kinds of white, paper. Their own prod- 
uct was worth ^8,000 per annum ; the others 
would not average ^200 ; that of all England 
would not exceed ^28,000. All the parchment, 

J 



r 



48 PAPER: ITS GEN:^S1S 



vellum and paste-board made or imported in 1695 
was not worth more than ^10,000. 

The bill nevertheless became a law, and, not- 
withstandinsf the slifjht discrimination in favor of 
the British manufacture, we are not surprised to 
learn that in 1713 it had "fallen into decay;" 
but rather to find that in that year Thomas Wat- 
kin, a London stationer, succeeded in reviving it, 
and soon carried it to high repute and perfection. 
It increased so that in 1721 the whole quantity 
of paper made in Great Britain rose to 300,000 
reams, or about two-thirds the whole consump- 
tion of the realm. The value of that made two 
years later, in 1723, was estimated at ^780,000. 

But it was many years still, after this, before 
the English manufacture acquired an equality 
with that of the continent of Europe; for it is 
emphatically stated that James Whatman, who 
in 1770 established a superior manufacture at 
Maidstone in Kent, and became celebrated in his 
art, had first worked as a journeyman in some of 
the principal paper mills " on the Continent." 

After this, the work prospered. In 1799 
twenty-four millions pounds of rags, of which 
over one-third were imported from the Continent, 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



49 



were made into paper in England, and in 1800 
the duty on paper manufactured in the Kingdom 
was ^315,805. Favoring laws and the zeal of 
the manufacturer had made that change from the 
statement of the Protest of 1696. 

The introduction of the paper manufacture 
into the British colonies in North America ante- 
dated, however, even the era of that protest; 
and the product seems to have been not of the 
quality styled "brown," although doubtless, not 
of the purity which would delight a printer of 
1 88 1. Before James Whatman's enterprise was 
well under way the amount of the paper-making 
in the colonies was so great as to intensely dis- 
gust their remarkably affectionate, cherishing 
mother beyond the seas. 

William Rettinghuysen, whose name anglicized 
into Rittenhouse, was afterwards rendered famous 
by his great grandson, David, the mathematician 
and astronomer, emigrated from Holland among 
the early settlers of Germantown, Pa., now a 
suburb of Philadelphia; and we are not sure 
that the family name will not finally find its chief 
and most lasting honor in the fact that its first 
ancestor in America established in 1690 the first 



/ \ 

50 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



paper mill in America. In this work he was 
associated with William Bradford, for whose 
character we must refer the reader to Franklin's 
Autobiography. The mill was built upon a small 
stream in Roxborough near Philadelphia, still 
called Paper-Mill Run. Every household in the 
northern colonies then made linen from the flax 
grown as a staple upon almost every farm, and it 
was used for the purposes for which cotton is 
now chiefly employed; so that the rags and worn- 
out articles of this material furnished abundant 
stock for one mill. 

We condense the following statement of the 
other paper mills in America previous to the year 
1800 from Joel Munsell's admirable "Chronology 
of the Origin and Progress of Paper- Making." 

The second mill in America was built in 17 10 
at Crefeld, now a part of Germantown, by Wil- 
liam De Frees, a connection of the Rittenhouse 
family. In 1697 William Bradford, a rather 
speculative sort of person, leased his quarter 
part of the Roxborough mill to William and 
Nicholas Rittenhouse for ten years, at the annual 
rent of seven reams of printing paper, ten reams 
of good writing paper and two reams of blue 



V 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 5 I 



paper. In 1724 Bradford applied to the execu- 
tive council of New York for the exclusive right 
to make paper in that province for fifteen years. 
Not getting it he did not have a chance to sell 
out to some practical manufacturer. It is need- 
less to say that he built no mill himself. 

In 1828 William Demees and John Gorgas, 
who had been apprentices of Rittenhouse, erected 
the third paper mill in Pennsylvania, and are 
" said to have made paper resembling tanned 
asses' skin from a species of rotten stone found 
in the vicinity, which was prepared for use by 
being thrown into the fire for a short time." If 
there is any truth in the story the stone must 
have been fibrous asbestos, and might have 
remained in a fire more than a short time without 
hurting it. In 1854 one Maniere took out a 
patent in England for making a lire-proof paper 
out of this substance : but it was known in the 
time of Pliny. In 1728 the General Court of 
Massachusetts granted to a company the exclu- 
sive right of making paper in the Province for 
ten years on condition that in the first fifteen 
months they should make 115 reams of brown 
paper, and sixty reams of printing paper; the 



r 



52 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



second year the same with the addition of fifty 
reams of writing paper, and each year afterwards 
the same with the further addition of twenty-five 
reams of superior writing paper. The same vice 
clogged the paper manufacture which for many 
years retarded the progress of the woolen : each 
maker, instead of perfecting himself in a single 
branch of his business, undertook all; the same 
mill in one case making broadcloths, satinets, 
cassimeres, etc., and in the other the several 
classes of paper. 

The first paper mill in New England — not 
then specially a manufacturing section — went 
into operation at Milton, Massachusetts, in 1730, 
under the patent granted two years before. The 
manager was David Henchman, a Boston book- 
seller, who received some aid from the General 
Court, and in 1731 exhibited creditable specimens 
of his work before that august body. The mill 
was discontinued after a few years from lack of 
a skilled workman; but it was revived in 1770 — 
a citizen of Boston obtaining for a British soldier 
stationed there, a furlough long enough for him 
to put it in operation ; a favor which the powers 
over the water would have hardly approved. 



V 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 5 3 



The public interest in this mill is shown by an 
announcement in the News Letter \\\ 1769 that 
"the bell cart will go through Boston before the 
end of next month, to collect rags for the paper 
mill at Milton, when all people who will encour- 
age the paper manufactory may dispose of them ;" 
and the public zeal was spurred by the adding of 
the following poetic effusion : 

" Rags are as beauties which concealed lie, 
But when in paper how it charms the eye. 
Pray save your ra<rs, new beauties to discover, 
For paper, truly, every one's a lover; 
By the pen and press such knowledge is displayed 
As wouldn't exist if paper was not made. 
Wisdom of things, mysterious, divine, 
Illustriously doth on paper shine." 

In 176S Christopher Lefifingwell became the 
first paper-maker in Connecticut, and established 
a mill at Norwich, being encouraged by a bounty 
from the colony of two pence per quire on all 
good writing paper, and one penny upon all 
printing and common paper. In i 770 he received 
this bounty upon 4,020 quires of writing paper 
and 10,600 of printing paper. The government 
of the colony, probably considering the industry 
well established, then withdrew its bounty; but 

V 



r ^ 

54 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



the country was close upon the era of the Revo- 
lution, and it was a mistake to withdraw encour- 
agement from a manufacture which furnished a 
product so necessary as paper. In this year 
there were in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 
Delaware — then the chief seats of the paper 
manufacture — forty mills whose product was 
valued at ^100,000, not, probably, the pound 
sterling, but the colonial pound, worth in Federal 
currency three dollars, thirty-three and one-third 
cents. Massachusetts when the Revolution com- 
menced had but three small paper mills, and 
Rhode Island only one, and that out of repair. 
Connecticut had at least one, in addition to 
Leflfingweirs ; that of Watson and Ledyard at 
East Hartford, which in 1776 wholly supplied 
the press of Hartford — then sending out eight 
thousand copies of newspapers weekly — and also 
furnished the greater part of the writing paper 
used in Connecticut and in Western Massachu- 
setts, as well as much of that required in the 
continental army. 

In Southern New York there were in 1776 at 
least two mills ; as Thomas Loosely and Thomas 
Ems obtained exemption from military service 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 55 



for a master workman and two attendants for 
each mill, as indispensable to the prosecution of 
the business. 

Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina and 
other provinces at once took measures to increase 
the supply, but with no sufficient effect. The 
paper famine continued to be severe, and what 
could be procured, generally of the poorest 
quality; everything like rags being ground up 
together to make paper, giving it the peculiar 
tints observable in the publications and manu- 
scripts of the period. Paper sufficiently thin, 
strong, pliable and inflammable for the making 
of cartridges was especially scarce. Upon the 
occupation of the city of Philadelphia by the 
American army in 1778, paper of this class was 
called for by proclamation, and searched for by 
files of soldiers, with small result, the largest 
quantity being a sermon preached in favor of 
defensive war during the French and Indian 
troubles, and printed by Franklin. Twenty-five 
hundred copies were found in a garret, and 
employed in making the musket cartridges after- 
wards used in the battle of Monmouth. 

In 1 781 the public printer of New York was 



V. 



r 



56 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



unable to obtain paper upon which to print the 
journal of the Assembly. 

After the Revolution, paper mills multiplied, 
but not so rapidly that there were not until the 
end of the century frequent periods of great 
scarcity, sometimes compelling newspaper pub- 
lishers in certain localities to suspend their issues 
for a time. 

The greatest seat of the paper manufacture in 
America is now found in the four western coun- 
ties of Massachusetts, a region full of its mills, 
and with flourishing cities and towns largely 
dependent upon it for their prosperity. In the 
sixth century Cassiodorus wrote : " It is a noble 
invention of ingenious Memphis that the beauti- 
ful texture (papyrus paper) made in a single spot 
should cover all the writing desks of the world." 
The world is practically many times larger now 
than it was in the sixth century, and has a great 
many more writing desks ; and it is certainly a 
thing of note that the " beautiful textures " made 
in a single section, circumscribed, and remote 
from metropolitan centres, not only supply a very 
large proportion of them, but supply greater needs, 
of which the sixth century never dreamed. 



V. 



AND ITS RE VELA T/0. vs. 57 



The pioneer of the manufacture in this region, 
to which it is now so famihar, was Zenas Crane 
of Worcester, who in 1799 went "prospecting" 
through it, on horseback — as most travehng there 
was then done — in search of a proper location for 
a paper mill, and finally selected one on the west 
branch of the Housatonic River in the town of 
Dalton, Berkshire County. The owner, Martin 
Chamberlin, was so doubtful of the success of the 
enterprise that he would only give an oral " per- 
mit to b-uild and try it," and after the thing was 
done eave a deed "for the land with the mill 
standing thereon." 

The mill, afterwards known as " The Old Berk- 
shire," was built in the spring of 1801, by Henry 
Wiswell and Zenas Crane. As described by Mr. 
Charles O. Brown, president of the Carson & 
Brown Company, which now owns the works 
which have succeeded it, it was a one vat mill 
with a daily capacity for making 20 "posts " con- 
taing 125 sheets of paper each, of "cap " or " folio" 
size, or a weight of from 100 to 200 pounds. Mr. 
Crane was the manager, and, in addition, there 
were required an engineer at $2) ^ week, a vat- 
man and coucher at $3 each, a lay-boy at 60 cents 



r 



58 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



and board, a man for oreneral work, and two eii'ls 
at 75 cents a week each and board The history 
of the business in Dalton and Berkshire is inter- 
esting, but it was recently told in an essay by 
Lieut-Governor Weston, which was published in 
The Paper World, and is also too local for our 
present purpose, except in so far as it illustrates 
the general progress of the manufacture. 

About the time of the buildin^ of the Old Berk- 
shire mill, the Fourdrinier machine w^as invented 
and although it was several years before it was in- 
troduced in American mills and many before the 
first was employed in Berkshire, it marked a new 
era in the general manufacture and we suspend 
our account of particular establishments to note 
some of the great improvements which had been 
made previous to this invention. 

The first point in the manufacture of paper is 
like the old recipe for cooking a hare : " First, 
catch your hare" — First, gather your rags. Very 
much depends upon the character of the rags, 
and that very much upon the civilization and re- 
finement of the reoion in, or the class from which, 
they are collected. But the method and sources 
of this supply in themselves form a large subject. 



r ^ 

AND ITS REVELATIONS. 59 



which we pass over here. Sufficient, that there 
are at least, as sorted by the foreign rag mer- 
chants, five different qualities, and that in the 
mills a still more careful discrimination is desir- 
able. Says Tomlinson, a high English authority : 
" If rags of different qualities were ground at the 
same engine the finest and best parts would be 
ground and carried off before the coarser were 
sufficiently reduced to make a pulp. In the sort- 
ing of rags intended for the manufacture of fine 
paper, hems and seams are kept apart, and coarse 
cloth separated from fine. Cloth made of tow 
must be separated from that made of linen, cloth 
of hemp from cloth of flax. Even the degree of 
wear should be attended to, for if rags compara- 
tively new are mixed with those much worn, the 
one will be reduced to a good pulp while the other 
is so completely ground up as to pass through 
the hair strainers, thus occasioning, not only loss 
of material, but loss *of beauty in the paper ; for 
the smooth, velvet softness in some papers may 
be produced by the finer particles thus carried 
off. The pulp produced from imperfectly as- 
sorted rags has a cloudy appearance, in conse- 
quence of some parts being less reduced than 



6o PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



others, and the paper made from it is also cloudy, 
or thicker in some parts than others, as is evident 
on holding a sheet up before the light When it 
is necessary to mix different qualities of rags in 
order to produce different qualities of paper, the 
rags should be ground separately and the various 
pulps mixed afterwards." 

At what time these refinements in the manu- 
facture were severally introduced does not ap- 
pear ; they seem to be the result of the experience 
of practical workers, like Whatman ; a natural 
and gradual growth, unmarked by sudden transi- 
tions. The sorting at the mill is done by women 
and children. Each sorter stands before a table 
frame covered at the top with wire cloth of about 
nine meshes to the square inch. To the frame a 
long steel blade is attached in a standing posi- 
tion, and the sorter shreds the rags by drawing 
them across the edge. Sometimes the seams and 
edges are cut out and sorted by themselves, and 
sometimes they are ripped open with a sharp, 
small knife. The long knife attached to the 
frame was formerly, and is sometimes still in 
American mills, the ends of broken scythes. A 
great deal of dust shaken out in this operation 



V. 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



6i 



■\ 



falls through the wire cloth into a receptacle be- 
low. The rags, as they are cut and sorted are 
thrown into compartments surrounding the table 
and specially assigned to each class. 

In many cases, after unpacking bales of rags it 
is necessary to partially cleanse them in a duster; 
that is a rapidly revolving cylinder covered with 
wire netting and enclosed in a tight box. Much 
dust, which might otherwise vitiate the air of the 
sorting room, is thus thrown out. The " stamp- 
ing " method of pulping rags, of which mention 
has been made, prevailed before the use of the 
duster and when there was scant sorting of the 
ragr. It was then the practice to pile the rags in 
large stone vats and leave them a month or six 
weeks, with frequent stirring and a constant sup- 
ply of water, to rot or ferment until the fiber be- 
came sufficiently loose to be reduced to pulp by 
pounding with stampers in wooden mortars. A 
writer cotemporary with this method thus de- 
scribes the further process : 



"These mortars are cut out in a block of heart of oak, well 
seasoned, the cavity being of an oval figure about eighteen inches 
broad, thirty inches long and eighteen or twenty deep, the bottom 
concave and lined with an iron plate an inch thick, eight inches 



62 PAPER : ITS GENESIS 



broad and tliirty long, shaped inward like a mould for a salmon, 
with the head and tail rounded. In the middle of the mortar is a 
cavity, beneath the plate, and four or five grooves are cut, forming 
channels which lead to a hole cut from the bottom of the cavity 
quite through the block; it is covered by a piece of hair sieve fas- 
tened to the inside. This plate is grooved to make teeth, on which 
the teeth of the hammers act, to cut the rags in pieces. The use 
of the hair sieve is to prevent anything going out except the foul 
water. Two hammers work side by side in each mortar, and are 
lifted alternately by the mill. They are sometimes made, in the 
same manner as the stampers of an oil mill, to lift perpendicularly. 
In other mills they are large hammers moving on a center, like a 
fulling mill, and lifted by cogs upon the mill shaft in the same man- 
ner. The mortars are kept constantly supplied with fair water by 
little troughs, leading from a cistern which is kept full by small 
buckets afifixed to the floats of the water wheel ; these when they 
have raised the water to the top pour it into the cistern in the 
same manner as the Persian wheel." 

This was an ingenious contrivance, as will be 
seen, and a vast improvement upon the primitive 
method of hand-beating with mallets or stones ; 
but its operation was tedious, and the result not 
perfect. It was easily superseded by an invention 
made in Holland about the year 1759, and hence 
called the " Dutch Engine," but of late more com- 
monly simply " The Rag Engine." Essentially 
there are two engines arranged in pairs upon dif- 
ferent levels, the bottom of one being higher than 



V. 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 6 3 



the top of the other, so that the contents of the 
higher mav be let off into the lower ; the stuff 
partially pulped in one becoming completely so 
in the other. Knights American Mechanical 
Dictionary describes them as follows : 

" The two are alike in general construction, consisting of an ob- 
long trough with semi-circular ends. They are made of wood lined 
with lead, or may be entirely of cast-iron. The trough is divided 
by a longitudinal partition, on one side of which is journaled a re- 
volving cylinder provided with teeth. This cylinder is capable of 
being raised or lowered, and works against a block fixed in the 
lower part of the trough, which is also provided with cutters cor- 
responding to those of the cylinder. 

The first, or upper machine, is termed the Washer, as into it 
the rags, after being boiled in lye, are introduced. A current of 
water is allowed to flow through the trough, and the roller, in its 
elevated position, is set in motion, which thoroughly washes and 
cleanses the rags. The roller is then lowered in its bearings and 
the speed of rotation increased, causing a constant current circu- 
larly around the trough, carrying the pulp between the roller and 
the block until it is reduced to what is technically known as 'half 
stuff' This is then transferred to the second engine, known as 
the beater. During this part of the process the bleaching material 
is added. The Beater, or Pulping Engine, is precisely similar to 
the washer, except that its roller and block are provided with a 
large number of cutters, and it is driven at higher speed. * * * 
* The pulp in its finished condition is called 'ivhole stuff,' and is 
run into a reservoir whence it is taken out as it is wanted to sup- 
ply the vats." 

The rag engine is still in use, with some im- 



r 



64 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



I. 



provements, but substantially of the same con- 
struction. At first, in Holland, it was driven by 
wind-mills; in England and America chiefly by 
water power. Of course steam is now largely 
employed. 

After the rao:s had been cut and beaten into 
whole stuff, all the other processes of the manu- 
facture were performed by hand, until about the 
opening of the present century ; the method being 
that described below : 

"The ' whole stuff,' now often called the 'beaten pulp,' prepared 
in the engine, is run out by pipes into the stuff chest, where, if 
there are different kinds, they are mixed. It is then transferred 
to vats or tubs, each of about five feet in diameter and two and a 
half feet deep, provided at the top with planks inclined inward to 
prevent slopping during the moulding. In the Old Berkshire mill, 
and doubtless in others in America, these vats were square and 
smaller at the bottom than at the top. 

The paper is made into sheets by means of the mould Tind. the 
deckle. The mould is a shallow box, or frame, firmly made of ma- 
hogany, of which the top is covered with a wire cloth or screen, 
varying in fineness with the paper to be made. It consists of 
wires tightly stretched across the frame and crossed at right angles 
by a few stronger wires bound to the smaller at the points of inter- 
section by a still finer wire. In several kinds of paper the marks 
of the mould are apparent, the fabric being thinner where the pulp 
comes in contact with the protuberances. It is on the same 
principle that what, by a misnomer, is called the water-mark, is 
produced, fine wires bent in the desired form being sewed to the 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 6 5 



surface of the mould, and leaving their impression upon the sheet. 

The paper moulded upon the kind of wire cloth described above 
is known as laid. A species of it, or an imitation made by ma- 
chinery, has since been highly esteemed by connoisseurs as a writ- 
ing paper, but the roughness it exhibited in the early part of the 
eighteenth century rendered it objectionable for that purpose, and 
still more so for printing; which led to the invention in England, 
about the year 1750, of wove paper; the wire cloth of the mould, 
not the paper, being woven. The result was a perfectly smooth 
sheet. 

The deckle is a thin, flat frame of mahogany, bound at its cor- 
ners with brass, corresponding in its outer dimensions to the size of 
the mould and in its inner to that of the sheet to be moulded. Its 
office is to retain the pulp upon the wire cloth, and it must be so 
evenly made that it will lie flat upon it, or the edges of the paper 
will be badly finished. When the deckle is in place it forms, with 
the mould, a shallow sieve, not fastened together, but held in place 
by the two strong hands of the dipper^ a skilled workman, who 
takes up in it so much pulp suspended in water as his experience 
tells him is sufficient for a sheet of paper. This he shakes gently 
until the water is drained off and the pulp spread evenly upon the 
wire, in the form of a sheet. He then removes the deckle, and 
shoves the mould along a board placed for that purpose on the top 
of the vat, to the coiicJier, another workman, who, with great skill 
and care, gradually inclines the mould to a piece of felt or woolen 
cloth laid flat to receive the still soft sheet of pulp which he gently 
deposits upon it, and returns the mould to the dipper to be again 
used. By constant practice the two become so dextrous as to re- 
peat this delicate operation with great rapidity, considering its 
nature, although of course not to be compared with the speed of 
modern machine work. The dipper thus continues to lay alter- 
nately a sheet and a felt until 2i post — that is, six quires — are piled 



r \ 

66 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



up; the felt absorbing a portion of the moisture which remains, 
and preventing the sheets from adhering to each other as they 
would in their raw state if not separated. When a post is com- 
pleted it is put in a screw press, which forces out a large quantity 
of water, hardens and consolidates the paper, and, to a certain ex- 
tent, smooths the swells and hollows caused in the laid paper by 
the wires. When a second post is ready, the first is taken out of 
the screw press by the lifter, a third skilled workman, who makes 
them up into a compact pile without felts. When several of these 
piles are ready they are put into what is called the wet press, and, 
under heavy pressure, a great deal of moisture is again expressed, 
the sheets gain stronger consistency by the closer interlacing of 
the fibers, and the felt marks are obliterated. After being removed 
from this press, the sheets, in parcels of seven or eight, are hung 
to dry upon peculiarly arranged racks. When sufficiently dry the 
paper is taken down, sleeked, dressed, and shaken to separate the 
sheets and get rid of the dust. Next comes the sizing — the size 
being made from the shreds and parings of raw hide and parch- 
ment, the liquid product of which is nicely clarified and receives a 
small modicum of alum. Into this the sheets are dipped in such a 
manner as to expose both surfaces. The sheets are then piled up, 
with thin boards interposed at intervals to keep them steady, and 
are again subjected to pressure in order to get rid of any super- 
fluous size. In this and preceding pressings the force must be ap- 
plied very gradually and with great care, so as to permit any bub- 
bles of air caught between the sheets to escape without injury to 
the paper. The paper is then transferred to lofts, and in parcels 
of two, three, or even more sheets, hung up to dry, care being 
taken to regulate the temperature and the admission of air. After 
hanging three or four days, it is taken down and carried to a build- 
ing called a saul, from the French salle, or the German saal, a 
hall, where it is examined, finished, 'and again pressed. The press 



V. 



r \ 

AND ITS REVELATIONS. 67 



used is of extreme power, and paste-board very smooth and hard is 
placed between the sheets in making writing paper; answering to 
our calendering process. The best quality of paper was hot- 
pressed ; that is, between every fifty sheets of paste-board a plate 
of heated iron was interposed. The last pressing is repeated 
several times, the sheets being as often turned, so that the smooth- 
ing may be uniform. The paper is then made into quires and 
reams, trimmed, and once more pressed." 

The above description, which is chiefly con- 
densed from Tomlinson, is that of paper-making 
by hand in England at a comparatively recent 
date. The earlier manufacture both there and in 
America, was, however, very nearly the same, 
with inferior mechanical appliances, especially in 
the matter of presses. In the Old Berkshire mill, 
the first in western Massachusetts, the common 
screw press was used for many years, the power 
being applied by a lever made of a bar of stout 
wood, sometimes twenty feet long. A workman 
in the mill at the time, now a gentleman in high 
standing in the community, tells us that he has 
often seen these levers splintered by the workmen 
in their efforts to secure an effectual pressure. 

The engineer, vat-man (or dipper) and coucher 
performed the same work, substantially in the 
same manner, as in the English mills. But, in- 



r 



68 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



^ 



stead of the lifter, the lay-boy took the sheets 
from the felts and laid them in piles, an operation 
which required some dexterity ; and the subse- 
quent processes of pressing, sizing, trimming and 
folding were done by such work people as were 
competent and could be spared from other work, 
under the direction of the overseer or engineer. 
The lay-boy held a good deal such a position as 
that of the devil in a printing office. When he 
was not engaged in his special duty he was kept 
busy in tending upon the workmen, and on all 
sorts of errands, the most frequent being to 
Holden's tavern, to which he was constantly des- 
patched for bottles of rum or some other liquor, 
for which he was rewarded with a liberal glass 
upon his return. The gentleman who tells us 
this from his own experience wonders that this 
practice did not make him a drunkard. Before 
he was fourteen years old he had, by it, acquired 
a love for ardent spirits, which he still retains, 
although for over forty years he has tasted none. 
The reader will observe passim the large num- 
ber of workmen employed in proportion to the 
amount of product as compared with the modern 
machine manufacture, and also the low wages of 



r ~~>i 

A ND ITS REVELA TTONS. 6 9 



labor. A considerable number of the skilled 
workmen employed, probably twenty-five or thirty 
during the first thirty years, were Englishmen. 

A matter of some interest belonging to the 
era of the hand manufacture is the derivation of 
the names of certain classes of paper from curious 
water-marks of the, old makers. One of the old- 
est — as far back as 1539 — consisted of a hand 
pointing to a star ; whence came the name of 
" hand paper." A favorite mark about the same 
time was a jug or pot, and so came " pot paper." 
When the Puritans had succeeded in overthrow- 
ing the royal government and establishing the 
English Commonwealth, they substituted for the 
royal arms, which had before distinguished a cer- 
tain class of paper, a fool's cap and bells, and 
from that piece of grim ridicule the " foolscap " 
sheet took its name. A postman's horn indented 
upon another size made it " post," and with the 
addition of the city where it was first made, 
" Bath post." 



V. 



■\ 



70 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



V. 



PART III. 

The Manufacture of Paper by MacJihiery — The 
Manufacture of Paper by Hand. 

Great as the advance had been from primitive 
methods, paper-making at the close of the last 
century was still a tedious, difficult, and therefore 
costly, operation. But if there was among manu- 
facturers any longing for improvement by means 
of machinery, it was far from hopeful. They 
seem to have been resigned to the separate 
moulding and finishing of each sheet by hand, 
although it required much time, as well as extra- 
ordinary care and skill in each workman from en- 
gineer to lay-boy. And yet the first and most 
important step had been taken towards the inven- 
tion of a machine by whose aid, chiefly, the proc- 
ess has been rendered so nearly automatic as to 
require comparatively little care and skill on the 



A ND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 7 I 



part of subordinate workmen, and so hastened 
that rags received at the mill on one day may be 
turned out the next day as paper, instead of re- 
quiring three months as formerly ; while, although 
the machine is itself very expensive, the cost of 
the product is reduced fully one-half. An Eng- 
lish writer, speaking of what is accomplished by 
this machine in mills known to him, says : " In 
the brief space of tJiree minutes, and in the short 
distance of thirty or forty feet, a continuous 
stream of fluid pulp is made into paper, dried, 
polished and cut into sheets. The paper thus 
produced is moderate in price, and for many pur- 
poses superior to that made by hand. It is of 
uniform thickness, and can be fabricated of any 
desirable dimensions. It does not require to be 
sorted, trimmed or hung up in the dry-house — 
operations which in the hand manufacture led to 
defects in about one sheet out of every five." 

This extreme speed, however, is not usual, nor 
indeed is the manufacture from the rags in one 
day very common, although in case of necessity 
in book and newspaper it is not infrequently 
done. In the English mills the same may be 
true of writing paper, which is there completely 



V. 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



K. 



finished by machinery. The best American writ- 
ing papers — known as loft dried — after being- 
sized, dried, and cut into sheets, are taken from 
the racks hung in lofts for complete drying and 
finished by hand, with the aid of powerful calen- 
dering presses. But even these, if need be, can 
be finished in five days from the rags. 

The early history of the machine by which the 
achievements specified by the English writer are 
accomplished — and which we now call the Four- 
drinier Paper Machine — is a noble one in itself, 
but sad as regards the men to whom the world is 
indebted for it — literally indebted ; for, except in 
pitifully scant honors to their names, small part 
of the debt has ever been cancelled. Most of 
them died in poverty, to which they were reduced 
from affluence by their expenditures in this be- 
half ; and in biographical dictionaries which care- 
fully preserve the memories of petty politicians, 
obscure divines and the like class of " notables," 
we look in vain for the names of Robert, Gamble, 
Fourdrinier and Donkin. 

It was in the year 1798, when the throes of 
the French Revolution were beginning to subside 
under the rule of Napoleon, that Louis Robert, 



/ 

AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 7 3 



sometimes called a clerk and sometimes a work- 
man, in the mill of Louis Didot at Essonne, an- 
nounced that he had invented a machine by 
which he could, with the aid of one man, make 
sheets of paper fifty feet long and twelve wide. 
But he apparently left this incomplete to pass to 
a more important device in the same direction. 
He had an ardent passion for invention, and was 
probably both a clerk and workman. He was 
ridiculed, and even reproached, for wasting his 
time and energies in a pursuit which " could 
never amount to anything ; " but he persevered 
manfully, and soon completed a small working" 
model — " not larger than a bird-organ " — upon 
which he made endless, or continuous, paper, al- 
though not wider than tape. From this model a 
machine was constructed, which in 1 799, at the 
Essonne mill, made a continuous web of paper, 
twenty-four inches wide— a size at that time much 
used in France. The government awarded Rob- 
ert a patent upon his invention for fifteen years, 
and a gratuity of 8,000 francs. Shortly after- 
wards he sold to M. Leger Didot his patent and 
small working model for 25,000 francs, to be paid 
in installments ; but the payments not being made 



r 



74 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



according to agreement, he recovered his patent 
by a decree of court dated June 23, iSoi. 

The machine operated in 1799 was very im- 
perfect, and the distracted condition of France 
for many years previous had left neither the 
wealth of its capitalists nor the skill of its me- 
chanics in a plight to aid in the necessary im- 
provements. In this state of affairs, while the 
invention was still in the hands of M. Leger 
Didot, he proposed to his brother-in-law, Mr. John 
Gamble, an Englishman, to seek the aid of British 
capital and skill. Gamble assented, and the 
scheme was carried out, according to one author- 
ity, with the permission of the French govern- 
ment for the transfer ; which seems hardly prob- 
able as, to say nothing of the intense international 
jealousies of the period, France and England were 
at that moment engaged in a bitter and critical 
war. But, at any rate Didot somehow got safely 
over the Channel, towards the end of the year 
1800, and with his small model of Robert's ma- 
chine, proceeded to London. In the meantime 
Gamble, who had preceded him, and who held 
some office under the British government, had 
succeeded, by his personal influence and by ex- 



V. 



~^ 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 75 



hibiting long rolls of the paper made at Essonne, 
in enlisting the sympathies of a firm of wealthy 
and liberal capitalists, Messrs. Henry and Sealy 
Fourdrinier, then the leading stationers of Lon- 
don. Thus happy in early obtaining the aid of 
capital, the adventurers were equally fortunate in 
the employment of mechanical skill and genius. 
Dartford in Kent, long noted for the manufacture 
of paper and paper-making machinery, had in 
Hall's engineering establishment, all the tools 
then known which would be required in the im- 
proved construction of the novel automaton ; and, 
what was of still more consequence, they found 
in Mr. Hall's assistant, Bryan Donkin, a youno- 
and zealous machinist who combined precision of 
workmanship with fertility of invention in a re- 
markable degree. To this gentleman they en- 
trusted the development of the inchoate inven- 
tion ; and in 1803, after almost three years of the 
most intense application, he produced a self-act- 
ing machine for making an endless web of paper, 
which, being set up at St. Neot's, under the 
supervision of Mr. Gable, " worked in such a man- 
ner as to astonish every spectator." 

From that time Mr. Donkin devoted all his 



r 



76 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



talents and energies to the progressive improve- 
ment of " that admirable apparatus," which, in the 
opinion of Dr. Ure, "has by the unfailing regu- 
larity, precision, promptitude and productiveness 
of its work, earned for him a place along with 
Watt, Wedgewood and Arkwright, in the temple 
of mechanical fame." In the year 185 i the firm 
of Donkin & Co., of which he was the senior 
partner, made their 191st Fourdrinier machine. 
They had sold 83 for Great Britain, 23 for France, 
46 for Germany, 22 for the north of Europe, 14 
for Italy and the south of Europe, 2 for America 
and I for India. 

In April, 1801, Mr. Gamble was granted a 
patent upon the machine as it then was, and in 
June, 1803, another upon certain improvements, 
both of which he assigned in 1804 to the Fourdri- 
niers. In 1808 he assigned his whole interest in 
the concern to the same firm, having lost in the 
enterprise both his fortune and eight years of irk- 
some diligence. In the meantime, in August, 
1807, his patent of fourteen years from April, 
1801, was extended by an act of Parliament for 
seven years longer. The proprietors showed 
good reason, in the enormous cost of their experi- 



V 



r 



AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 7 7 



ments and the national importance of the inven- 
tion, why the extension should be fourteen years 
instead of seven. There was no objection to the 
longer period in the Commons, nor to its justice 
in the House of Lords ; but the committee of the 
latter said : " Take seven years now, and if your 
remuneration does not prove sufficient in tliat 
period, come again and you shall have seven 
more." And so it would have been, but for an 
unworthy trick of Lord Lauderdale, the sole op- 
ponent of the extension, who cunningly got in- 
serted in the rules of the House of Lords, a 
standing order that no extension of a patent 
should be granted except toHhe original inventor. 
It was in vain represented that Henry Fourdri- 
nier was substantially such. 

But even before the expiration of the patent as 
granted, the generous and enterprising Fourdri- 
niers, who had withdrawn ^60,000 from their sta- 
tionery business to further the invention, became 
bankrupt ; so many difficulties had they encoun- 
tered, and so little was the aid which they received 
either from the government or the paper manufact- 
urers of the country they were serving so well. 
And, not only did they receive no aid, but, after 



r 



78 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



the bankruptcy, none of their patent dues could 
be collected, although twelve suits were brought 
in chancery; "that unscientific judge," Lord 
Chancellor Tenterden, sustaining certain frivolous 
and merely technical "objections to their well 
specified patent." Says Dr. Ure : "The pirat- 
ical tricks practiced by many considerable paper- 
makers against the patentees are humiliating 
to human nature in a civilized, and sol disant 
Christian community. Many of them have owned, 
since the bankruptcy of the house removed the 
fear of prosecution, that they owed them from 
^2,000 to ^3,000 each." The Fourdriniers died 
in poverty ; Henry, at the age of ninety, as late 
as 1855. 

In 1806 the patentees claimed that, while it 
cost sixteen shillings to make a hundred weight 
of paper by hand, with their machine it could be 
produced for three shillings and sixpence ; so that, 
there being 900 vats in the United Kingdom, 
with an annual production of 432,000 cwts., the 
saving, if the machine were used by all the mills 
would be ;^ 2 64,000; or more than three-quarters 
of the entire cost. Subsequent statements of the 
reduction of cost and increase of production 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIOXS. 79 



at various stages in the improvement of the 
machine give the impression that the sanguine 
temperament of the patentees led them into some 
Httle exaggeration of the probable saving of 
expense ; but the genius of Mr. Donkin soon 
brought it to surpass what was claimed. Thus, 
while in 1806 five men were required to tend each 
machine, in 181 3 three sufificed ; and these with- 
out giving that close attention, or necessarily pos- 
sessing the same skill which was previously 
demanded. In 1806 the machine was capable of 
doing the work of six vats in twelve hours ; in 
18 1 3 that capacity was doubled, and the expense 
reduced to one-quarter what it was. 

The advantages over hand-making paper 
claimed in 1 8 1 3 were : i st. The superior strength, 
firmness and appearance of the finished product. 
2d. After leaving the machine the paper requires 
less drying, pressing and pasting, and conse- 
quently comes sooner to market. 3d. The 
quantity of broken paper and re-tree is as nothing 
compared with what it is in the hand-making. 
4th. The machine makes paper with cold water; 
in hand-making, warm was required. 5th. It is 
durable and little liable to need repairs. One 



V 



r 



80 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



that has been in use in Hertfordshire for three 
years cost only ten pounds annually for repairs. 
6th. As paper mills are almost universally run by 
streams which vary considerably from time to 
time in their power, an important advantage will 
arise from the use of the machine. The com- 
mon mill is limited by the number of its vats, so 
that no advantage can be taken of the accessions 
of power which frequently happen in the course 
of the year ; but where the machine is employed, 
as scarcely any mills are capable of preparing, stuff 
for twelve vats, every accession of power will 
increase the product without adding to the cost. 
7th. The manufacturer can suspend or resume 
his work at pleasure ; and he is, moreover, relieved 
from the perplexing difficulties and loss conse- 
quent upon the perpetual combinations for the 
increase of wages." 

We have given this statement the more fully 
as, besides its main object, it throws some light 
upon the state of the manufacture in England 
during the early part of the 19th century. The 
price of the machines in 1807, by Donkin's sched- 
ule, varied, according to capacity, from /'715 to 
^695 for those driven by belting, and from ^750 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



to /^ 1,040 for those driven by wheels. As each 
successive improvement simplified the construc- 
tion, the price was probably at least not increased 
until larger sizes with attachments for various 
purposes were introduced. 

In the year 1S39, two hundred and eighty Four- 
drinier machines were working in Great Britain 
and Ireland, making daily in the aggregate six- 
teen hundred miles of paper, from four to five 
feet wide. The invention had lowered the price 
of paper fifty per cent, and added ^400,000 to 
the revenues of the United Kingdom ; and, yet, 
in the multitude of pensions which flowed from 
the British treasury to all sorts of persons, worthy 
and unworthy, we cannot learn that any went to 
relieve the poverty of Henry or Sealy Fourdri- 
nier. It is not republics alone which are notably 
ungrateful. 

Some improvements have been made in the 
Fourdrinier machine since 181 3, and several most 
valuable inventions have been added to, or incor- 
porated in it. In the original construction of 
the machine, the lateral shaking given to the 
wire web injured the fabric of the pulp by bring- 
ing its fibres more closely together breadthwise 



V. 



r 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



than lengthwise, which tended to produce long 
ribs in the surface of the paper. In 1828 George 
Dickinson, an English paper-maker, devised a 
mode of obviating this by giving an up and down 
motion. But Mr. Donkin introduced a method 
of governing the vibrations " in a much more 
mechanical way," which seems to be the slice ; a 
thin blade of steel, which crosses the wire web a 
short distance from the point where the beaten 
pulp first reaches it, at a height of about an inch 
and a half from its surface. All the " stuff " 
must pass under this, and when it emerges the 
surface is not only freed from lumps, but the 
longitudinal waves previously very perceptible 
have nearly or quite disappeared, and are not 
reproduced, the motion imparted to the semi- 
liquid pulp being rather of a shivery character. 
But the greatest difficulty in the use of the 
machine, as first constructed, was to remove the 
water from the pulp and condense it with suf- 
ficient rapidity to prevent it becoming ivater 
galled, and permit the web to proceed directly to 
the drying cylinders. In 1830 John Wilks, a 
partner of Bryan Donkin, remedied this by 
adding a perforated and channeled roller, called a 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



«3 



V. 



dandy, which facilitates the escape of the water 
at this stage in the progress of the web. 

In the same year Thomas Barrett, another 
EngHshman, invented a method of introducing 
the water-mark in continuous paper, by means of 
engraved plates of thin metal attached to the 
surface of the "dandy." "It is to this ingenious 
man," says Munsell, " that we are also indebted 
for the improved means of finishing paper, owing 
to the perfection he attained in making cast- 
iron rollers more true than was possible by the 
old mode of turning them in a lathe. His 
method, which is now adopted in finishing all 
rollers requiring great accuracy, consists in grind- 
ing the rollers together for many weeks, merely 
allowing a small stream of water to run over 
them without emery or other grinding material. 

In 1830, Richard Ibotsford, an Englishman, 
invented an apparatus for separating the knots 
from paper stuff, which the sieves or strainers in 
use could not do effectually. It was previously 
necessary, both in hand and machine making, to 
pick lumps from the paper after it was made, 
which left it often in a damaged state, and still 
did not entirely free it from imperfections which 



r 



84 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



were liable to seriously damage type and wood 
cuts. In 182 1, T. B. Crompton, still another 
Englishman, took out a patent for drying and 
finishing paper by means of a cloth against 
heated cylinders, and also for the application of 
shears to cut the paper into suitable lengths as it 
issues from the machine. In 1831, Edward Pine 
of Troy, N. Y., and E. N. Fourdrinier patented 
a very ingenious apparatus for cutting continuous 
paper into lengths. 

The above and other inventions, made since 
18 1 3, have been, or may be, applied to the 
Fourdrinier machine, of which a fine specimen 
built about 1876, by George Bertram of Edin- 
burgh, is thus described in Knight's American 
Mechanical Dictionary : " It is of the class known 
as an eighty-inch machine — that is, the endless 
wire web upon which the pulp flows, is eighty 
inches wide and thirty-three feet long; being 
capable of forming paper over six feet wide, after 
the edges are trimmed, and of indefinite length. 
The machine is sixty-eight feet long." The 
largest made by Donkin in the year 1806 was 
about thirty feet long, and made paper only fifty- 
four inches wide. 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



85 



The operation of the Bertram machine is thus 
described : 

The pulp — (whole stuff) from the heating 
cylinder is admitted to the receptacle, denomi- 
nated a chest, through a strainer, which consists 
of a sheet of metal perforated with slits. It is 
here constantly agitated by a stirrer — or revolv- 
ing frame — and is then driven in a stream into a 
second and smaller chamber, where it is again 
stirred by a similar agitator. After passing over 
a channeled plate, by which extraneous matters 
of greater specific gravity than the pulp are 
arrested, it is then delivered on to the endless 
wire web or apron, which answers to the mould 
of the hand manufacturer. To this the lateral, 
or sidewise shaking movement is given, — in imi- 
tation also of the hand-maker, — in order to dis- 
tribute the fluid pulp evenly over the surface. 
This wire web is supported by a large number of 
small rollers. The width of the paper is gov- 
erned by deckle straps, — answering to the deckle 
frame of the hand manufacturer, which are car- 
ried by rollers, their tension being regulated by a 
peculiar device. Next, a vacuum box from which 
the air is partially exhausted by a set of air 



r 



86 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



>v 



pumps, withdraws a portion of the moisture from 
the sheet as it passes over it. The sheet is then 
carried, still on the wire apron between cloth- 
covered rollers, by the lower one of which, and 
others specially provided, the apron returns to 
the point from which it started, to receive a fresh 
supply of pulp, and again pursue its round. 
The paper sheet, parting from the apron, is 
transferred to a felt blanket, which conveys it to 
the press rolls. These are solid, and over the 
upper one is a thin edge-bar, which removes 
adhering particles of the fiber from the roll, and 
also serves to arrest the progress of the paper 
should it stick to the roll, thus preventing injury 
to the blanket. These rolls are adjusted in their 
bearings by a screw, so as to exert greater or less 
power, as may be desired. The blanket then 
conveys the sheet to a position where it is 
received by a second set of press-rollers, which 
farther compress it, and expel more of its moist- 
ure. After passing the press rolls, the paper is 
received upon a second endless blanket, which 
carries it to the first of a series of steam-heated 
cylinders, between which it is partially dried and 
then conveyed between other pressure rollers to 



V 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



87 



a second set of drying cylinders. Thence, after 
being subjected successively to the pressing and 
stretching action of a series of rollers, it is 
delivered on to a cylindrical reel. Registering 
mechanism indicates when the proper quantity 
has thus been delivered; when the reel is re- 
moved and a new one substituted. 

In modern machine-paper-making there are 
some variations from old methods in the proc- 
esses, both before the pulp reaches the machine 
and after the paper leaves it in an unfinished 
state ; some of which we enumerate. 

Two kinds of sizing are used, vegetable and 
animal; both generally made in the mill. For- 
merly animal size, or gelatine, was employed 
exclusively ; but when mixed with the pulp in 
the vat, it was found to injure the felt with which 
it came in contact in subsequent stages of manu- 
facture, and also the paper, and in 1S27, Canson 
Brothers, in France, patented a substitute, the 
base of which was wax ; and in the same year, 
M. Delcambre produced another, the base being 
rosin, to which powdered alum was added. This 
last is the vegetable size now used, and when pre- 
pared, it closely resembles mustard prepared for 



r 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



the table. Gelatine continues to be used as an 
animal size, and is still made from the shreds of 
parchment and raw hide, chiefly the latter. Be- 
fore it is dissolved for the size bath, it is a beauti- 
ful light amber-colored jelly, and cannot be dis- 
tinguished either by the eye or the taste from the 
table luxury known as "calves' foot jelly;" indeed, 
it is essentially the same thing, and properly 
flavored, is often served up under that name by 
high-toned caterers to unsuspecting epicures. 
While the paper manufacture was of small extent 
in America, the shreds of hide from which the 
gelatine is made were furnished by the native 
tanneries, now they are chiefly imported, although 
there seems no sufficient reason for it. The veg- 
etable size is mixed with the pulp in the vat, 
when it is intended for printing paper, and some- 
times, when it is desired to make a specially 
hard writing paper. It thus becomes thoroughly 
mixed with the fiber. This is all the sizing re- 
quired for printing paper. When writing paper 
is made, no size is ordinarily mixed with the 
pulp ; but in the special cases, when it is so 
mixed, an exterior coating of gelatine is after- 
Vv^ards applied. 



V 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



~\ 



89 



V. 



Some improvements have also been made in 
the rag engines so that they stand more firmly, 
and are more neatly made, and also more freely 
discharge the water. Mr. E. D. Jones, of Pitts- 
field, has patented valuable devices for the more 
easy, convenient and satisfactory elevation and 
depression of the cutting cylinder, (or rolls) and 
for other purposes connected with the same. 
Mr. Jones has also patented an improved washer, 
and a back fall which enables the machine to 
turn the stuff more rapidly without overflowing. 
Messrs. Smith, Winchester & Co., of South 
Windham, Connecticut, manufacture the Jordan 
beating engine for the purpose of cleaning stuff 
after it has been three-quarters beaten, which is 
said to work so perfectly that nothing can pass 
through it without being brushed. 

The water for the rag engines must be of the 
purest quality, and is now generally supplied 
from springs, through pipes, and a hydrant fur- 
nished with a stop cock. Some of these springs 
furnish an immense amount of water. Puitips 
have been invented for the transfer of half stuff, 
and for similar purposes ; and a fan pump for 
various purposes, but particularly for conveying 



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90 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



back the water which passes through the wire on 
the Fourdrinier machine. Indeed there is no 
end to the devices which have been invented to 
perfect the engines and the machine, and facih- 
tate their working. We have enumerated merely 
a few, which seem to work a decided change in 
some important portions of the manufacture. 

Printing paper is finished when it has passed 
the drying cylinders last spoken of in the descrip- 
tion of the machine, and it is there cut into 
sheets by the shears. 

In the further finishing of writing paper, the 
common English and the common American 
practice differ. In the English mills, the gelatin- 
ous sizing, the subsequent drying, the cutting 
into sheets, the calendering and the folding, are 
all done automatically by machines attached to 
the Fourdrinier, through which the paper suc- 
cessively passes without aid from the workmen. 
This gives rapid work, but the product is not 
considered absolutely perfect, and it is probably 
for this reason, that some hand-making establish- 
ments still exist in great Britain. The American 
manufacturers, endeavoring to combine the ad- 
vantas^es of the old and the new methods, remove 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



91 



the damp paper from the machine, after it has 
passed through a bath of gelatinous size and 
been cut into sheets. It is then taken to lofts 
and dried as in hand-making. After hanging 
about three days, it is taken to a room answering: 
to the said of the hand-makers, and after exami- 
nation is calendered, each sheet being passed sepa- 
rately by hand between iron rollers which subject 
it to an immense pressure. It is then folded, 
packed in quires and reams, and goes to market. 
The early process of finishing paper by pres- 
sure between sheets of polished paste-board — 
made in the mill — was superseded by calendering 
paper, the sheets being placed between copper- 
plates and passed several times through powerful 
iron rollers, the product being sometimes called 
copper-plate paper. This method continued in 
use until quite recently, but now has given place 
to what is called super-sheet calendering, in which 
the paper is passed between rollers, one of which 
is made of chilled iron, and the other of com- 
pressed paper, surrounding an iron shaft. The 
paper is of the strongest kind — commonly manil- 
la — and is compressed by immense hydraulic 
power. 



r 



92 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



"^ 



The American Loft-dried Paper of Commerce. 

Of this there are many quahties, depending 
upon the raw material used, the management and 
machinery of individual mills, and other circum- 
stances ; but, as a class, it has no superior. This 
could have been said of it for years past in regard 
to the ordinary purposes of paper ; but for the 
uses of luxury, and for what are known as wed' 
ding goods, paper was, until quite recently, 
imported : now the very choicest article of this 
class, known as plate paper, is made in America. 
In this, the stock is most carefully selected, every 
process of the manufacture sedulously watched, 
and in the calendering a press much more power- 
ful even than that commonly used, is employed, 
while in it the sheets are placed between plates 
of polished zinc. The press used for this pur- 
pose, in the mill of Z. Crane, Jr., and Brother, at 
Dalton, exerts a force equal to 330 tons weight. 
The result is an exquisitely finished surface, 
rivaling satin or ivory in beauty. 

The cost of the machinery required in the 
immense establishments which fill the place of 
the little one or two vat mills of seventy or eighty 
years ago (or in America fifty years ago), may be 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



93 



partly estimated by that of some of the leading 
articles : Thus, a Fourdrinier machine of the 
very first class in size and workmanship, is worth 
^12,000, from which the price decreases to per- 
haps ^7,000; the rag engines, of which there are 
necessarily several to each machine, from ^1,000 
to $2,000 each ; the calendering machines from 
$500 to $1,000 ; the plating machines, from $600 
to $1,400 each. 

The Fourdrinier machine made its way slowly 
at first, except in the British Empire. It was 
not until the year 181 5, that the invention of 
Louis Robert returned to its birth-place, with the 
various improvements made in it by English 
skill, capital and persistence ; and the first Four- 
drinier machine was made in France. In 1820 it 
was first introduced into the United States, one 
of English manufacture being placed in Gilpin's 
mill, on the Brandywine. In 1828 there were 
"a number of these machines in the country, of 
which six — one to every ten mills — were in 
Massachusetts." 

The first Fourdrinier machines manufactured 
in America, were built about the year 1830, by 
Messrs. Phelps & Spofford at Windham, Con- 



r 



94 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



necticut, at which time, or a little before, a great 
impetus seems to have been given to the paper 
business of the country, as is illustrated by a 
statement of the New York Journal of Commerce, 
that althouorh the dimensions of its sheet had 

O 

been quadrupled in the preceding five years, the 
improvements in paper machinery had been so 
great that the cost was reduced 25 per cent. 

Whether this gain was made through the 
Fourdrinier or a rival machine, may be doubted. 
In 1809, John Dickinson, an English manufact- 
urer, patented a machine to which he afterwards 
added valuable improvements, which makes a 
continuous web upon a different principle from 
that of Fourdrinier, the paper being excellent, 
especially for printing purposes. In this machine, 
a hollow polished brass cylinder, perforated with 
holes or slits, and covered with wire cloth, takes 
the place of the endless wire web of the Four- 
drinier. In the cylinder the air is exhausted 
through the trunnions or axes of the machine. 
The Dickinson machine was introduced in the 
American mills before the Fourdrinier, and ap- 
pears to have been a favorite. Owing to its 
cheapness, it is still much used for making straw 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



95 



and other inferior classes of paper. In 1872, 
when there were 299 Fourdrinier machines run- 
ning in the United States, there were 689 cyhnder 
machines. 

In 1822, John Ames, son and successor of 
David Ames, who estabHshed himself as a paper- 
maker in Springfield, Massachusetts, some years 
before Zenas Crane located at Dalton, produced 
a cylinder machine which, it was thought, would 
have a oreat success. To what extent it was 
actually introduced, we cannot say. Between 
1822 and 1837, Mr. Ames took out four other 
patents for improvements in paper-making ma- 
chinery. 

Later inventions of paper-making machines 
seem to have been aimed at cheapness of con- 
struction, or at making thicker paper by means 
of a double web. Scanlan's machine, with the 
latter object, combines the Fourdrinier and the 
cylinder, and the outer and inner surface may be 
of different texture and colors. James Harper 
of New Haven has an invention for the same 
purpose which is claimed to have advantages 
over every other. The Harris machine is also 
a double web. 



V 



r 



96 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



The rags and other material from which paper 
is made, form a very large item of its cost. The 
gathering of these from the scattered famihes of 
the country by tin peddlers and others, which 
has been continued to this day, furnished a sup- 
ply sufficient for the manufacture in its infancy ; 
the prizes of bright tin ware teaching the econ- 
omy of saving them better, perhaps, than money. 
How much the quaint appeals, in prose and verse, 
of the manufacturers and newspaper editors, 
" begging the ladies to save their rags " had to 
do with the lesson, we can only guess. But with 
the growth of the manufacture, the home supply 
soon became inadequate, and great quantities of 
rags have long been annually imported, as will 
appear in statistics to be given in the closing 
portion of this book. They are drawn from all 
countries in the old world, except those having 
large paper industries of their own, which are 
obliged themselves to import. If men have not 
robbed the cradle to supply this demand, they 
certainly have the grave, for, as we have said in 
another connection, the catacombs of Egypt have 
been ravaged to sell the linen cerements of the 
mummies to the rae dealers. But with even this 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



97 



aid, the supply became limited and rags rose in 
price. The demand for substitutes began early 
in the present century, and the search for them 
has continued ever since. Knight's Dictionary 
prints, in Nonpareil type, a list of the articles 
which have been used or suggested, and if it 
were in a continuous column it would measure 
forty-six inches. Those who have read the first 
section of this book need not be told that the 
use of wood, reeds and the like substance as a 
material for paper, is not a thing of recent cen- 
turies in the world, whatever it may be in Europe 
and America. However, a good many things 
have to be discovered more than once in this 
wide world, and new methods of better doing the 
old work go on forever. And thus in the year 
1800, the Marquis of Salisbury presented to our 
old friend. King George III., who had such a 
repugnance to paper-making in America^ a book 
printed upon paper made of straw. We have 
little doubt that the paper was made and the 
book written by Matthias Koops, who, in 1801, 
" succeeded in making the most perfect paper 
from straw, wood and other vegetables, without 
the addition of any other known paper stuff." 



V 



98 PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



He printed a book upon the fabric from these 
materials, and concerning them, from which 
Munsell gathered many facts for his Chronology. 
During a rag famine in Germany, in 1756, an 
attempt was made to use straw in the paper 
manufacture, and a book was published giving a 
plan for reducing all vegetables to pulp. Prob- 
ably Koops, who, from his name, appears to have 
been at least of German decent, had seen or 
heard of it. "He seems also to have been the 
first to discover a mode of extracting printing 
and writing ink from waste paper. He obtained 
a patent for manufacturing paper from straw, 
hay, thistles, waste and refuse hemp and flax, and 
different kinds of wood, fit for printing and 
almost all other purposes for which paper is 
used. He claimed to have produced the first 
useful paper that had ever been made from straw 
alone." But rag famines were at that time rare, 
and little if any use was made of Koops' dis- 
covery. 

In 1824, Louis Lambert, a F'renchman, took 
out a patent for an improved method of reducing 
straw to pulp and extracting the coloring and 
other deleterious matter, so that it could be used 



V. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



99 



V. 



in the ordinary rag engine. In 1827, Wm. 
Magaw of Meadville, Pa., patented a mode of 
preparing hay, straw, and similar substances for 
making paper. The product was said to be 
yellowish, but even and strong, and to receive 
ink as well as common writing paper. Paper 
was made under this patent at Chambersburg, 
Pa., in 1828, and it was stated in the newspapers 
that machinery was being constructed to make 300 
reams of it a day. Louis Bomeisler of Philadel- 
phia, in 1829, obtained a patent for making straw 
writing paper, white and handsome. 

For bluing and bleaching paper Smalts were 
used exclusively until 1840. At that time some 
paper-makers in Germany and at Annanay, in 
France, tried to substitute Ultramarine, on ac- 
count of its being cheaper and offering less dif- 
ficulties in its application. They were not suc- 
cessful however, as it did not resist the action of 
the alum. Artificial Ultramarine was discovered 
in 1827-28, by Woehler, in Germany, and Guimet, 
in France, and was first sold at about ;^4 a pound, 
while natural Ultramarine obtained from Lapis 
Lazuli, was selling at ;f8o per pound. About 
1852 a few manufacturers succeeded in preparing 



r 



lOO 



PAPER : ITS GENESIS 



alum proof Ultramarine, which came quickly into 
general use for bluing, and more particularly for 
bleaching or whitening paper. There is no other 
substance nor process known that will give the 
paper a more permanent and softer whiteness, or 
a more durable blue tint. 

The process of making alum proof Ultra- 
marine is as yet only known to a limited number 
of manufacturers. All attempts to produce it in 
this country failed, until a few years ago, the firm 
of Hoffman & Kiessig of New York, commenced 
to turn out an article which compares most favor- 
ably with the best known German and French 
brands, and finds a ready sale. Blue Anilines 
are used as a substitute for Ultramarine on book 
and news, — mostly cheap goods, — but scarcely 
on writing paper. While they have high color- 
ing qualities, they lack bleaching power, and 
above all, fastness of color. For a while Aniline 
took, to some extent, the place of Ultramarine, 
but time having shown how quickly it fades, it is 
now used less. It is used to best advantage 
where the pulp has been first whitened with 
Ultramarine. The process observed in applying 
the Ultramarine is as follows: 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



lOI 



Before putting it into the engine, it is sepa- 
rately dissolved, i pound of Ultramarine in one 
quart of warm water. To avoid spots, an ounce 
of Soda Ash is added for every pound used of 
Ultramarine. 

In all colors where Ultramarine is used for 
whitening it is put in by itself ; the second color 
is dissolved separately in boiling water, put in 
boiling hot, and dashed off with cold water. By 
this method a very brilliant hue is obtained. A 
great variety of beautiful and lasting green 
shades, particularly in writing paper, are obtained 
with Ultramarine through a combination with 
chrome yellow. 

In 1854 a practical chemist exhibited in New 
York a superior quality of paper made entirely 
from straw and other grasses, claiming to have 
discovered a process of freeing them from their 
silex and other detrimental substances. In 1855 
the Saratoga Whig\N2J& printed upon paper made 
three-fourths of straw, by Buchanan & Kilman 
of Rock City, who employed a French Bleaching 
process and made a good writing and printing 
article. Improvements continued to be made 
and the manufacture extended, until, in 1870, 



V. 



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I02 



PAPER: ITS GENESIS 



"\ 



when superfine book paper ruled at 20 to 24 
cents, and fine book paper at 16 to 17 cents, the 
newspapers were mostly supplied with straw 
paper at from 12 to 12I cents. The manufacture 
of paper from wood reduced to a pulp has not 
been so rapid, or extended so widely as that from 
straw, but excellent results have been obtained, 
and a large quantity of the pulp is now annu- 
ally used. 

We give some statistics from Appleton show- 
ing, to some extent, the growth of the paper 
manufacture in the United States since the 
period of which we have already given the facts : 

In 18 10 the number of mills in the United 
States was estimated at 185, of which 7 were in 
New Hampshire, 2)^ in Massachusetts, 4 in 
Rhode Island, i 7 in Connecticut, 9 in Vermont, 
28 in New York, 60 in Pennsylvania, 4 in Dela- 
ware, 3 in Maryland, 4 in Virginia, i in South 
Carolina, 6 in Kentucky and 4 in Tennessee. 
They produced annually 50,000 reams of news- 
paper, valued at $3.00 per ream ; 70,000 reams of 
book paper at $3.50; 111,000 reams of writing- 
paper at $3.00, and 100,000 reams of wrapping 
paper at 85 cents. 



r 



AND ITS REVELATIONS. 



103 



■\ 



In 1828 the newspapers consumed 104,400 
reams, costing ^500,000, and the total value of 
all the paper made was nearly ;^ 7,000,000, and of 
the rags and other materials used about ^2,000,- 
000. In 1839 and 1840, the value of the rags 
imported each year was $560,000, of paper im- 
ported, $150,000, and of paper exported, $85,000. 
In 1850 the value of rags imported was $748,707, 
three-quarters coming from Austrian and Italian 
ports, at a cost of $3.16 per hundred pounds. 
The imports of paper in the same year amounted 
to $496,593. The capital invested in the manu- 
facture in the United States was about $18,000,- 
000, and the annual product of paper about 
$17,000,000. In 1870 there were, in the United 
States, exclusive of paper-hanging manufactories, 
669 establishments, mainly making printing, 
writing and wrapping paper, with a capital of 
$34,365,014, and products valued at $48,676,985. 
Of those, 117 in New York produced $10,301,- 
563; sixty-five in Massachusetts, $6,661,886; 
seventy-five in Pennsylvania, $5,176,646; forty- 
three in Ohio, $3,799,505, and sixty in Connecti- 
cut, $2,715,630. 

In Sept., 1882, the number of paper and pulp 



V. 



104 PAPER. 



mills in the United States was 1040. Since 1870 
the expansion of the paper industry has been 
very great, especially in Massachusetts. In the 
very latest years many new mills have sprung up 
in the West. 

We have thus attempted to trace the story of 
one of the grandest and most important of the 
industries of civilization, from the earliest years 
of the earliest nations to the latest year of the 
youngest. In this space at our command, we 
could not be expected to treat so large a subject 
profoundly, or to exhaust it; but we have endeav- 
ored to give some correct notice of it, and if we 
have approximately succeeded, it was worth the 
endeavor. 



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THE CAMPBELL 



TWO-REVOLUTION 



JOB AND BOOK PRESS. 




THE ABOVE CUT REPRESENTS THE 



u 



IMPROYEDICSMPBELL 

OB MD1500K"^ 



H 



OOi 



TWO-REYOLUTION, 



On which this work was printed ; showing, that while our brethren of the paper 
craft have been improving their manufactures, we have made rapid 
strides towards perfection in furnishing the machinery 
that makes their fabric of such inestima- 
ble benefit to mankind. 

CAMPBELL PRINTING PRESS & MFC, CO., 



145 Monroe St., CHICAGO. | 45 Beekman St., NEW YORK. 



George Westinghouse, Jr., Ralph Bagaley, 

President. Secretary and Treasurer, 



H. H. Westinghouse, 

Superintendent. 



THE WESTINGHOUSE ENGINE. 




Two to 150-horse power. Dispenses entirely with skilled engineers. For a relay to 
deficient water power ; for steam mills ; for driving paper machinery. Requires neither 
lining-up, keying-up, adjustment, packing, oiling or wiping. May be set on a floor with- 
out foundations. Equal to the best in economy of steam. The superior of all in cost of 
maintenance. Parts built strictly to gauge, and interchangeable without regard to size. 
Send for illustrated circular and price list. 

THE WESTINGHOUSE MACHINE CO., 92 and 94 Liberty St., N. Y. 

Works at Pittsburgh, Pa. 



ORIGINAL PATENTEES. 



The American 
Wood Paper Company, 




lANUFACTURERS OF 



Pure Bleached Chemical Fibre. 

DRY IN ROLLS. 



SUITABLE FOR 



BOOK, FINE NEWS, AND WRITING PAPERS. 

For Samples and Terms apply to 

E. EMBREE, Agent, - - - NEW YORK. 

MORSE BUILDING, 140 NASSAU STREET. 



Address to Posl-Oflfice Box iSog. 



Charles 0. Brown, Prest. Established iSoi. John D. Carson, Treas. 







[The above cut is a fac-simile of the wrapper used on the Linen Ledger Paper.] 

OLD BERKSHIRE MILLS 

INEN Ledger Paper, 

Will stand the severest test of Color, Climate, Ink or Wear. 



Being TRIPLE SIZED (a process entirely our own), and LOFT DRIED, can be erased and 
written upon the fifth time distinctly. None genuine without the water-mark, thus 

Old Berkshire Mills, Linen Ledger, 

AND DATE. 

We will pay for any book rejected on account of fault in the paper. Send for Samples, test them in 
comparison, and see that your books are made from paper thus water-marked. 

CARSON & BROWN CO., Manufacturers, 

DALTON, MASS., U. S. A. 



I v,»."3 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

ililliillllilllli 

018 369 004 8 «S3 




